I am thou, thou art I…
Thou has turned a vow into a blood oath
Thy MOOSE shall become the wings of SQVIRREL
and break the Saturday morning of thy cartoon block,
Thou has awakened to the ultimate secret of BULLWINKLE, granting thee infinite power…
Nah, you want to see something fucking horrifying?
I have mildly wondered at times just how much hair Ann has that it poofs out so much.
Also, I’m not bringing this up just because a bunch of teenagers don’t know how to find Anonymous, I’m bringing this up because this is the fourth time our heroes just kind of mull around until the plot finds them.
: “Yeah, she was going on about domestic abuse and taking the case to court and stuff…”
: “…”
: “What’s up?”
: “… It’s nothing. So to summarize what you told us, Futaba is Boss’s daughter, and he’s abusing her? I don’t know her very well… is he really the kind of person who would do that?”
: Nah, Atlus already did the whole “One of your social links was secretly the villain the entire time” thing in Persona 4. Their writers are better than - actually, who the fuck am I kidding no they’re not.
: “I would like to believe so as well, but we don’t have any conclusive evidence, do we?”
: “Is it Alibaba!?”
: “What a selfish person.”
: “Well, he does have information on us…”
: “Anyways, this Futaba he’s talking about have a Palace? If so, we’ll need keywords to get in. Try messaging him about 'em.”
: I didn’t realize it, but this is another slip (which I don’t think was intentional, unlike the one with Akechi) on Hashino’s part. Why would they need to meet Alibaba at all?
: “He can’t go out?”
: “Huh…? Did he just shut the whole operation down?”
: “This doesn’t make any sense… not only can Alibaba not go out, but he won’t let us meet Futaba either?”
: “Well, it’s none of our business now. We can’t contact him anymore.”
: “But… what do we do about Medjed? We won’t be able to get Alibaba to help us with them now.”
: “Maybe they were just prankin’ us. They made that huge declaration, but they ain’t done nothing since. I bet we got 'em freaked out.”
: “You mean they backed out because they’re afraid we’ll change their hearts?”
: “Yup. And now it’d just make 'em look lame if they came out and apologized!”
: “But-”
: “I guess with Alibaba and Medjed outta the picture, can we just say this case is closed?”
: “…You do have a point. I guess it is safe for us to relax a little.”
: I’m kind of surprised it was only $1500, given that the entire briefcase was plated with what was presumably way more than an ounce of solid gold (at time of writing, gold has a spot price around $1700 an ounce).
: “That’s awesome! We can really go all out with that kinda money!”
: “Yeah! Let’s make up for what happened at the fireworks festival! We gotta go eat somethin’ fittin’ for the Phantom Thieves’ worldwide debut!”
: “Where would be good?”
: “Ooh, how 'bout sushi!? I could really go for some eel too!”
: Joker taps Yusuke on the arm as if to say “No, Yusuke, we talked about this. You are a human being and not some kind of ginger gremlin.”
: “I’m all for sushi! You’re okay with that too, right?”
: “Then it’s decided.”
: “All right! We’ll go tomorrow night!”
: We spend the night crafting useless garbage again, and again we get the extra point. I think we might have enough extra time that I can fit in the rest of the books in one run and then do the game console games in another.
: Oh, right! I read in a thread on /v/ that apparently, Akechi’s new confidant scenes for Royal were basically ripped from the P5 anime. I should really get around to watching that at some point.
: “The Phantom Thieves made a mockery of us when they brought down Kaneshiro… and to make matters worse, Medjed, who has been dormant for some time now, just declared war on them. How much more can they screw us over?”
: “Stress is bad for the skin, you know.”
: “Did you come all this way simply to be sarcastic?”
: “How about you listen to my deductions for a change of pace? You may think it absurd… but don’t you think the case you’re pursuing and the actions of the Phantom Thieves overlap somehow?”
: “What are you basing this off of?”
: Someone once told Sae something was ‘based’ and she spent days trying to answer the question ‘based on what?’.
: “The one point of commonality across all cases is how those involved have an unforeseen change of heart.”
: “I’ve suspected that myself, but those suspicions are unfounded.”
: “I told you at the beginning that this was only a deduction. These ‘just’ Phantom Thieves are riling up the public. However, that is a disguise. Their true goal is terrorist action by way of psychotic breakdowns… is that too much?”
: Now look, I’m not saying John Persona caused the breakdowns, but John Persona caused the breakdowns.
: Meanwhile, Joker is eating sushi and Yusuke asks him “So wait, what’s our entire goal anyway?”, to which Joker responds “I dunno.”
: Ryuji looks over and goes “Can… can we bring Bionicle back?”
: “There’s nothing at the moment that falsifies that claim. Have you mentioned this to the police?”
: “I’d never tell them such things. The only value they have to me is in their mobility and organizational capabilities.”
: “I’m glad to hear that. What about your case, Sae-san? Did you learn anything from the guardian of that mental shutdown victim’s daughter?”
: And now we know what Futaba’s deal is. They could’ve, you know, saved this for the actual dungeon.
: “Nothing at all.”
: “I see. Now, what should my next action be for our victory?”
: “Handle the Phantom Thieves. Without remorse. Use any means necessary to win. That’s how I would deal with them.”
: chuckle “Very well.”
: “This seems to be fun for you. Are you on to something?”
: “No, not at all. Well then, to our victory.”
: “I-I don’t see any prices listed here…”
: “It’s called market price. Don’t worry 'bout it; we got the cash!”
: “Sooo goooooood…”
: “Hey, is the fatty tuna ready yet?”
: “Hold your horses. And don’t talk!”
: “By the way, Akira-kun… is Boss really the kind of person who would abuse someone?”
: “That again?”
: “I can’t get it off my mind. Especially if it means he could be taken to court… what kind of person is he? Do you truly believe he’d do such a thing?”
: “Hm…”
: “If it’s really true about the abuse, he’d be a no-good jerk pretendin’ to be a guardian.”
: “Maybe the chief is the one who needs a change of heart…”
: You know what would’ve been a good scene instead of some of the ones we got? Imagine a scene where the party (pre-Makoto) spends time trying to see if anyone they know has a Palace.
: “Sounds to me like there wasn’t a hit.”
: “Right. Anything beyond this is his family’s problem. We probably shouldn’t get any more involved.”
: “Wait… you think Alibaba could be Boss’s ex-wife!? He musta cheated on her, and that’s where Futaba came from.”
: “Still, this is delicious. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before.”
: God dammit.
: “U-Ummm… Ph-Phan… Fantastic! This sushi is delicious!”
: “Kamoshida’s Palace. At this time of year, at this time of day, localized entirely within your kitchen… may I see it?”
: “Y-Yeah! The fish is so fresh!”
: “Think about where we are, Ryuji.”
: “Sorry, it just kinda slipped…”
: “My apologies for bringing up Boss again. We should just enjoy the food.”
: When I got to this point, I was kind of surprised to see this scene was still in the game as-is and hadn’t been reworked.
: If you’ll recall, back when we met Akechi at the TV station, I mentioned that in the base game he was an auto-confidant. This scene was his Rank 2 scene in the base game.
: “Akechi-kun…”
: “Akechi?”
: “You’re the ones from the TV station… could it be that you’re friends of Niijima-san?”
: I bet Joker wishes he didn’t. Look at that goddamn sweater vest.
: “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Akechi. Glad to make your acquaintance, Yusuke Kitagawa.”
: “How do you know my name?”
: “Well, because I’m a psychic, of course. Haha, I’m only joking. In truth, I’m a rookie detective. You’re a former pupil of Madrame, right?”
: “I have actually just recently joined the investigation team looking into the Phantom Thieves. Did you see that Medjed has declared war on them?”
: “War?”
: Metal Gear!?
: “Their website was updated just a moment ago.”
: “Wait, what!?”
: “What’s it say!?”
: “Hm? Why do you seem so agitated?”
: “Oh, um…”
: “She’s, uh… a huge fan of the Phantom Thieves. A total nutjob for 'em.”
: “Hm, I don’t know how wise it is to be a fan of groups like them.”
: “What is with these comments?”
: “My apologies. I didn’t mean to butt into your conversation. But I must say, this is an interesting group. Prosecutor Niijima’s sister, an ex-pupil of Madarame, and a few Shujin Academy students… it seems you’re all connected to the Phantom Thieves. Perhaps you have better intel than I do.”
: “Ah yes, I wanted to ask you something. Regarding this whole Medjed commotion… if you were one of the Phantom Thieves, what would you do?”
: “Unsurprising. I suppose you aren’t interested in such gossip…”
: “Sorry to disappoint, but we’re just normal high school kids. If anything, we wanna hear what you gotta say, Mr. Detective.”
: I wish Joker would pull a Tatsuya here and just fucking deck Akechi in the face.
: “What, you gonna report us?”
: “I didn’t say I was being suspicious of you.”
: “M-Me!? You’re sidin’ with him!?”
: “I wasn’t anticipating that response. You always find a way to rise above my expectations. You really are an intriguing one. I lack your calm mannerisms… but don’t you think my deduction is an interesting one?”
: What!? The hell’re you sayin’!?"
: “Well, this has been a valuable point of reference for me. I hope to see you all again.”
: “Do you think he’s ascertained our true identities?”
: “Nah, couldn’t be. Right?”
: “I’d like to say that it’s simply us overthinking this, but… it may be best to be cautious from now on. We shouldn’t forget that Alibaba was able to discover who we are.”
: I’m surprised that, with Makoto being THE SMART GIRL and all, she hasn’t suggested… I dunno, not meeting together in public? Going into the palaces and Mementos separately and meeting on the other side?
: “True, but it’s not as though he had tangible evidence to prove that discovery. Just keep acting normally.”
: “More importantly, things are getting serious with Medjed!”
: “Oh yeah! What’d they write!?”
: “Here, I’ll read it.”
: “We are disappointed in the people of Japan and their belief in the Phantom Thieves’ false justice. Hence, we shall proceed with our plan to cleanse Japan. This process will commence on August 21st. As a result, the Japanese economy shall suffer devastating damages.”
: Pfft. Got news for you there, the Japanese economy has been fucked since the late 80s.
: “For real…?”
: “Keep going.”
: “However, we are magnanimous. We will give the Phantom Thieves one final opportunity to repent. As proof of this repentance, we demand that they reveal their identities to the public. We will attack if these demands remain unmet. The fuure of Japan rests with the Phantom Thieves.”
: “We are Medjed. We are unseen. We will eliminate evil.”
: “…That’s what it says.”
: “Sounds bad…”
: “In other words, if we don’t unmask ourselves, Medjed will attack Japan… correct? It seems they are quite the attention-seekers…”
: “What are we gonna do about this?”
: “If only we could get in contact with Alibaba…”
: “Looks like we got no choice but to ask for Alibaba’s help.”
: “Question is, how do we get in touch with him?”
: “He cut off all contact with us after that misunderstanding. Then again, if we manage to steal Futaba’s heart, he may attempt to reach out to us once more.”
: “But we don’t have any clues on what her keywords are.”
: “Dammit, Alibaba! Where the hell are you!?”
: “Actually, he may be closer than we think.”
: “Huh?”
: “Hypothetically speaking, even if we stole Futaba’s heart… how would Alibaba know that the deed has been done? Would he truly be able to discern that just from cell phone messages?”
: “You mean he’d have to meet her in person?”
: “Alibaba was able to deliver the calling card here. On top of that, he can check on Futaba’s condition. However, according to the circumstances he put forth, he’s unable to meet us. This leads me to believe that it would be bad for him if we were to see the two of them together.”
: What’s funny is how flawed her logic is here. You’re dealing with a person who can clearly hack cellphones, so what’s stopping it from being a third party who picks a target where it’d be really, really obvious if they had suddenly been brainfucked?
: “For real!?”
: “So she’s asking that we steal her own heart?”
: “Maybe she wants us to save her from the scars of her abuse? That would be hard to ask directly.”
: “I’d like to meet with Boss… he lives nearby, right?”
: “I agree. It’s real late though. What’re we gonna tell Boss when we get there?”
: “We’ll say this take-out sushi is a gift for him.”
: “But my fatty tuna…!”
: “No complaining.”
: Sojiro gets the sushi and goes “Fatty tuna? What are you, a cat?”
: “Let’s all go together. Boss may get the wrong idea if Akira-kun and I show up alone.”
: “Think she’s nappin’?”
: “Even Boss would’ve woken up with how many times we’ve rung this doorbell.”
: “I would think Futaba would have answered by now if she were here too.”
: “Dude, you can’t go openin’ other people’s stuff like that.”
: I think I’ve said this before, but this reminds me of the godawful rewrite character in Tales of Zestiria who is an assassin that doesn’t kill people.
: “But look. The door seems to be slightly open as well. I wonder why. That’s rather careless…”
: You can hear a thunderclap right after this, but obviously you can’t because this is an SSLP.
: “…Do you think that’s okay?”
: “Prolly?”
: “My apologies, Boss!”
: “Have you heard the word of our lord and savior YHVH?”
: “The door ahead is open, and I can hear the TV.”
: “I hope he didn’t pass out or something… I mean, Boss is kinda old, ain’t he?”
: Unlike a lot of characters, Sojiro doesn’t have a canon age. He’s probably somewhere in his late 50s.
: “I’m a bit worried. Should we go in and check on him?”
: “Please excuse us…”
: There’s a scream in the background that happens as the power goes out.
: “A scream!? What was that!?”
: “H-How should I know?”
: “Let’s get out of here, please? Can we just go?”
: “What’re you freakin’ out for?”
: “I-I-I’m not freaking out!”
: “Could it be Alibaba? I mean, Futaba?”
: “Makoto, it’s like ten feet to the door. Everyone else is already out. I thought you were THE SMART GIRL.”
: I think they lengthened this hallway for this cutscene, because we’re about to see it from the other side and it won’t make any sense how it takes Makoto more than like two seconds to leave.
: “I can sense someone’s presence…”
: “I can’t take this anymore! I’m leaving!”
: Oh, hi Futaba. Are you here to point out that Joker is within arm’s reach of opening the door at this point?
: I too would probably shriek at the sight of someone wearing a Tetris tanktop. Something about that just isn’t right.
: My favorite part about this cutscene is that it’s just several minutes of Makoto getting fucking owned.
: “Alibaba! Futaba! Hey! C’mon, where are you!? You’re a hacker, right? Just show yourself!”
: And now she’s devolved into being Maya. How long until we find out she was locked in a shrine and nearly set on fire as a child?
: “Crap, he’s home!”
: Why is there a frog next to the door?
: “Ah…”
: “You’re…”
: “Oh… g-good… evening, sir… we… didn’t mean… to intrude…”
: “Niijima-san! Wait, are you two dating?”
: “W-We’re j-just friends!”
: “Friends nowadays get that close to each other?”
: “That’s not it! This, um… things happened… and…”
: “Um, we brought you some sushi, but nobody answered when we rang the bell… the door was unlocked too. We could hear the TV though, so we got worried you might have passed out or something.”
: “The door was unlocked?”
: “Yes.”
: “… I do that sometimes. Guess I’m getting old.”
: “Um, excuse me. There’s something we’d like to ask.”
: “Hm? You wanna ask me?”
: “There’s someone else living here… isn’t there?”
: “Yeah… my daughter.”
: “Could she be Futaba Sakura?”
: “You told Niijima-san too!?”
: “U-Um… is there any way we could meet with Futaba-san? I think we may have frightened her earlier, so we’d like to apologize if at all possible.”
: “Well… that’s…”
: “Is she sick?”
: “No, it’s not like that.”
: “Futaba’s mother and I knew each other long before Futaba was born. Her mother was a bit of a weird one, but we got along well for some reason…”
: “She was sharp-witted, somewhat stern, a little socially inept, but always carefree… she truly was a great woman.”
: “I see…”
: “When something piqued her interest, that’d be all she focused on. She always worked deep into the night. I thought that’d change after her kid was born, but having Futaba didn’t do much.”
: “Even with that, she always took good care of her.”
: “Working and watching over a child at the same time sounds rough…”
: “I guess raising Futaba alone turned out to be tough on her in more ways than one…”
: Futaba is 15 years old in Persona 5. I’m not sure how old her mother was when she died, but my headcanon is that Baofu is her father.
: “There wasn’t a father.”
: They should’ve put a line in here where Yusuke goes “Is your daughter Jesus? Was she immaculately conceived?”
: “Well, there probably was one. I didn’t know him though. She never said a word about him, either. She was single when she gave birth to Futaba, and single when she raised her.”
: “They were an ordinary, loving family. You could really tell how much she cared for Futaba. But one day, she left… leaving Futaba behind.”
: “Suicide…!?”
: “Threw herself into the street, right in front of Futaba’s eyes…”
: I don’t hate this cutscene’s writing - in fact, I think this is one of the better cutscenes in the game. However, I still don’t like it.
: We already know pretty much everything there is to know about Futaba and Wakaba and we haven’t even set foot in the dungeon yet. The dungeon is therefore going to reiterate a lot of what we already know.
: The thing is, it would’ve been so much more effective if you just got to see it in the dungeon itself. Sure, there’s a few things we don’t know about Sojiro and Wakaba… but those aren’t revealed until after the dungeon.
: Personally, if I had been writing this, I would have just had Sojiro mention that Futaba’s mother is dead without explaining the circumstances surrounding it because he doesn’t really understand them himself.
: “Shocking doesn’t begin to describe that…”
: “That’s gotta be devastating for a kid.”
: “So… well, a lot happened after that, but I ended up taking custody of Futaba. First, she was so depressed that she wouldn’t even talk to me.”
: “Was that because she couldn’t get over her mother’s suicide?”
: God dammit Ann.
: “What!? But why!?”
: “That part she’s never told me. I wanted to know what led her to believing that, but I decided not to rub salt in the wound.”
: Then, a few months ago… she started getting real scared, even when nothing was happening. She’d say things like ‘I hear voices…’ and, "Mom is looking at me…’ "
: “Visual and auditory hallucinations… have you taken Futaba to a doctor?”
: “I wanted to, but she refused. Even when I had a doctor come, she locked herself away in her room. Since then, she’s become what you’d call a shut-in.”
: In case you’re wondering, the Japanese VA uses the word “hikikomori”, but the localizers didn’t for some reason.
: “She won’t take a single step outside the house, or even try to see other people.”
: “What about you?”
: “She doesn’t even let me come in her room.”
: “That’s pretty harsh…”
: “Futaba is, well, a unique girl. She’s so quick-minded that conversations with her tend to jump from one topic to the next. It seems like she’s always coming to conclusions in her head. There’s a lot I don’t get about her…”
: “Hmm…”
: “What Futaba needs is a safe place where nobody will threaten her. Somewhere she can be at ease. That’s why I won’t do anything she doesn’t want. I don’t make her do anything she’s unwilling to either.”
: “Then again, I know that’s no way for her to live. It’s all I can do though…”
: “I don’t know. She just asks me for things that she wants, like food or these complicated books… well, that’s that. So can you just… leave her be?”
: “I’m gonna head back then. You all had better head home soon too.”
: “No way in hell he’s abusin’ her.”
: “The reason why Futaba wants her heart stolen must be related to what happened to her mother.”
: Ann, shut up.
: “So she’d like to discard her feelings of pain, but can’t do anything about it herself.”
: “Will changing her heart really help her, though?”
: “If we can help her, we may be able to stand up to Medjed.”
: “Hold on a sec. Do we even know if she has a Palace? Let’s check.”
: “What the…?”
: “She’s got one…”
: “So someone can have a Palace even if they’re not evil?”
: Futaba is pretty much the only person in 5 or Strikers to have (or be) a shadow and not be evil. There is a Futaba equivalent in Strikers, however, because Strikers largely mirrors the original game’s story but with different villains.
: “Hey, Morgana-”
: “Where’s Morgana?”
: “I haven’t seen him for some time.”
: “So, ever since we went inside Boss’s house?”
: “…Somewhere ‘round there. He’ll be fine though. He’s a cat, after all. The trains’re gonna be shuttin’ down for the night soon, so we should prolly be headin’ home.”
: From what I’ve seen in Game Center CX, the last train is sometime between 11PM and midnight.
: “We have to go to school in the morning, after all.”
: “Ohhh, right. The urgent assembly.”
: “An assembly? What about?”
: “Shujin has been garnering a lot of attention ever since Medjed called out the Phantom Thieves. So, they need to remind us not to say arbitrary stuff online and add more fuel to the fire.”
: “We’ve gotta meet up for every goddamn little thing. Talk about a pain in the ass.”
: “I mean, it is our fault.”
: “Anyway, let’s contact each other afterward.”
: There’s a bunch of repeated dialog here, so I’m just going to skip it.
: Unfortunately, we can’t go out even into Yongen-Jaya. We’re forced to sleep.
: “I take it the chief told you about Futaba, and then you guys disbanded in relief for now.”
: “You can’t underestimate my intel-gathering skills, you know. I was checking out the chief’s house. I didn’t think our Alibaba would be so young…”
: “She had long hair and a pretty young-sounding voice. Well… I say young, but I think she’s probably about the same age as you guys. At the very least, she’s no amateur. She completely overheard your conversation with the chief, and she can hack into our chats too.”
: “Even if she can’t take Medjed down directly, she might have some kind of lead on them.”
: “In any case, we’ll need to rely on Futaba to get closer to Medjed. Let’s meet up again tomorrow. How about we do it in here? It’s way too hot outside… anyway, make sure you let everyone know.”
: “Hold on. While Medjed was targeting you, you chose to deal with someone completely unrelated to them?”
: “Then how was Medjed… what you’ve said about the Sakura family generally falls in line with our investigation. It appears you aren’t feeding us a false testimony.”
: “Hmph. If you’re lucid enough for jabs, you can get back to your story. It’s still unclear to us as to how the Phantom Thieves dealt with Medjed since their identity is unknown. If you tell me something coherent, I may be a little more willing to believe you.”
: Next time, we’ll reload a bunch for a book that it turns out isn’t part of the 100% route, run into a near-permafuck, run into an actual permafuck, and see Futaba’s palace for the first time.
I’m still working on the next update, but some news broke today:
This could be your last chance to buy a copy of Persona 1 or Innocent Sin, given that the physical copies only work in older PSPs that have UMD drives.
: Look, somebody pushed the button and now we have to have an emergency meeting. I vote for ejecting Morgana.
: “This is bigger than I thought. We can’t leave this be…”
: The game will really start pushing us hard to go into Futaba’s palace from the first day it’s available. I’m not sure why, given that Futaba’s palace isn’t a huge difficulty spike.
: “I applaud your cool-headedness, but it’ll be too late if we wait until after something’s happened. If Medjed does something drastic, what will people think of us?”
: “Let’s get this assembly out of the way. We have our own business to attend to!”
: “Huh? Did you have school too, Yusuke?”
: “I’m doing laundry, so these are the only clothes I had to wear.”
: I’m pretty sure that the way the game’s engine works, they have one flag that sets the outfit for all of the characters at once, and they didn’t feel like hard-coding an exception.
: “You really should buy a couple more outfits…”
: “Come now, we didn’t gather here to make small talk, now did we? Let’s get to Alibaba’s case.”
: “Well then, I’ll start. It looks like Futaba was listening in on Leblanc.”
: “But why would she want to listen in on the cafe?”
: “I have no idea.”
: “It’s just like Boss said… she’s a tough nut to crack.”
: “In any case, her hacking skills will be absolutely necesary if we wish to stand up to Medjed. Going by what she has told us, we may even be able to identify who they are.”
: “We’ll have to trust in her skills for now, then.”
: If I had one complaint about this entire segment of the game, it’s that it kind of feels like Hashino wrote all of the other plot arcs and then someone pointed out “Uh, boss? How come only bad people have shadows?”
: “That doesn’t matter. A Palace is the materialization of distorted cognitions brought about by strong desires… that’s all. It just so happens that a lot of warped people turn out evil.”
: “She’s so young though… the pain she’s gone through must be the cause of her distortion.”
: “Maybe that has something to do with why she calls herself Alibaba.”
: I think I mentioned this before, but the reason she calls herself Alibaba is because it’s a kanji pun.
: “According to the chief’s story, Futaba has auditory and visual hallucinations, right? There’s a chance those are related to some important memories she’s holding.”
: Translation: Futaba’s arc has a lot of stuff that never really pops up again.
: “It’s hard to explain… but those memories may have been warped by the distortions.”
: “So do we all agree about taking on Futaba’s Palace?”
: “She’s asked us to do so. I don’t think that part is an issue. If we heal Futaba’s heart, it will not only help Boss, but she can then assist us with Medjed.”
: “I agree.”
: “I’ve been wonderin’ about how about how Boss said ‘a lot happened’ after Futaba’s mom died too.”
: “Hold on a second. Our investigation of her Palace may not go like anything we’ve done up to this point.”
: “Why’s that?”
: “Having an individual ask you to steal their heart is an extremely irregular case. There’s no telling what the Palace ruler’s disposition will be like, or the distortion that’ll be there. We may run into some unforeseen situations. Do you still want to go in?”
: I missed a ‘choice’ here that’s basically “Yes we should go in” or “I’m not sure, but yes.”
: “All right. Let’s just make sure we’re cautious.”
: “Well, let’s get crackin’ on those keywords, huh?”
: The one thing I think Strikers does well plot-wise is that it eliminates the stupid “we need to find the keywords” bits. Of course, I’m not a big fan of what they replace it with - namely that the Palace owners are now aware they have a Palace and can apparently go there themselves, but you wind up fighting their Shadow instead for some reason.
: “Let us try going to their house first.”
: “Boss is busy running the cafe, isn’t he? We should make sure he doesn’t suspect anything.”
: “I’ll be able to remember everything if I turn back into a human, right?”
: “That’s not important! I’m talking about my memories here! I… definitely want this mission to succeed. If we can retrieve Futaba’s memories, then I’d bet we can get mine back too…”
: I’m not sure what Hashino was thinking when he wrote this line, because the whole point isn’t that Futaba has lost her memory, it’s that she can’t live with the memory she has.
: “In any case, it’s not every day you stumble upon a hacker like her around. You really do have a gift, don’t you?”
: “You sure live up to my expectations.”
: We can now craft the Infinite Lockpick, which is great because we have enough regular lockpicks to last us the rest of the game and then some.
: “She’s a shut-in, so we just gotta figure out ‘what’ she thinks her house is. If she can’t get out, maybe a prison?”
: Just like the other times they’ve done this, the phone says something in Japanese that isn’t subtitled when they guess incorrectly.
: “Perhaps a labyrinth with an unknown exit?”
: This is a blatant reference to the bomb shelter dungeon in Innocent Sin, and it hurts that they’re having the female Tatsuya clone say it.
: “Hmm… maybe an oasis?”
: No Ann, that’s the final boss theme. We’re not quite there yet, though I’m pretty sure if I grinded for a few hours I could take him.
: “We don’t have nearly enough clues…”
: “If only we could ask her directly…”
: “We can. C’mon, let’s go see Futaba.”
: “But what will we say to get in?”
: “Whaddya mean? We’re sneakin’ in.”
: “You have to be joking. Won’t the door be locked for sure this time?”
: “I’ll take care of that. Oh, and I figured out where Futaba’s room was when I snuck in last night.”
: “What if we run into Boss, though? There’s no way we’ll be able to avoid his questions.”
: “He’s at work now, so I think we should be fine.”
: “Gettin’ cold feet, Makoto? Don’t worry, it’ll be nothing. We’ve gone through loads of shit like this already.”
: “…This is our only choice, right? I suppose Futaba did get in contact with Akira-kun… perhaps she’ll at least be willing to speak with him.”
: “There’s no answer.”
: “Futaba-chan. Are you there? I’m sorry for being startled and screaming yesterday. It was so dark that I got scared.”
: “No reaction whatsoever.”
: “This is gonna be hard…”
: “You’re listening, right, Alibaba?”
: “Is it Alibaba?”
: “You’re Futaba Sakura, aren’t you?”
: “She’s not responding again.”
: “Does she not like us saying her name?”
: “We don’t have time to dally around. We need her keyword before dealing with Alibaba’s identity.”
: “We want to learn more about you. If we don’t do so, we can’t steal your heart. The reason why we came here is because we need the keyword to enter your Palace.”
: “Also we need Sojiro’s credit card number, the expiration date and the three digits on the back. Don’t ask why.”
: “That’s why we want to talk with Futaba Sakura herself, and not Alibaba. You don’t have to show yourself. Just answer some questions for us. Chat messages are fine.”
: “All right then. Our leader, the guy who lives in Leblanc’s attic, wants to speak with you. We’re counting on you, Akira-kun. Try and get a keyword out of her.”
: This is a dialog puzzle. I don’t know why it exists. I’ll only post the correct answers.
: The IM thing barely shows the reply before it cuts off.
: “Tomb?”
: “You think that’s it?”
: “Try entering ‘tomb’.”
: “We got it…!”
: “Yes. It was plenty. You haven’t forgotten your promise of helping us if we complete your request, right?”
: I’d like you to pay careful attention to something over the next cutscene. Specifically, pay attention to their feet.
: “Yeah, we see that. Wait, what the - our clothes are still the same?”
: “Futaba herself is asking us to steal her heart. It’d be odd if she saw us as a threat. If she doesn’t see us as an enemy, then your clothes don’t change. That’s how it works.”
: Fun fact, this is why babies can’t change their clothes - they don’t have enemies yet. Once they get a few, then they can do it.
: “But more importantly, I told you to be cautious! Why’d you activate it like that!?”
: I’m just amazed it didn’t draw Futaba in, given that Ann got pulled into Kamoshida’s palace and was about the same distance away.
: “Is that why we ended up in a desert? Where’s the tomb? It’s so damn hot here.”
: “Even though we entered right in front of her room, we didn’t end up inside it.”
: “She must really want to keep people away from her.”
: “I see…”
: “What a bleak feeling this place has… it’s the complete opposite of Kaneshiro’s bank.”
: “Let’s hurry up and get goin’. Where’s the Palace?”
: “Is it that way?”
: “A tomb in the desert… I see. Anyway, let’s make our way there.”
: “Isn’t that kinda far?”
: “Are we gonna walk!?”
: Okay, I have several questions. First off, can he feel his tires? Wouldn’t his tires feel the sand?
: “I’ll make sure to put the AC on full blast!”
: …Why does the cat have air conditioning?
: “You’re so considerate!”
: “Hehe, r-right…”
: Warning: The following anime cutscene is non-canon. Joker is not, has never been, and will likely never be horny.
: Clearly, the animators have never been to a desert or they’d know you don’t really sweat like that. Sweat pretty much immediately evaporates in the desert, which is why dehydration is such a threat.
: I’d know, because I did like a seven-mile walk to Hoover Dam a few years ago.
: What the fuck happened to Makoto’s face? Why is she some kind of horrifying modern art self-portrait? I mean, I know the answer, and the answer is QUALITY.
: Speaking of QUALITY, I got a copy of both the P5 anime and The Day Breakers OVA. Here’s a quiz for you. You are a director at an anime studio and get commissioned to make a 6-episode OVA to tie in with Persona 5. Do you:
Use your budget wisely and make something that may not be great, but at least isn’t QUALITY.
Outsource to the lowest bidder and make the second episode a clip show.
: If you answered 1, I’m sorry, you’re not qualified to be the director of a video game tie-in anime. Go find a job at Studio Trigger, maybe they’ll hire you. If you answered 2, congratulations, you’re hired.
: Wait a second… didn’t Morgana say he wasn’t a self-driving car? Makoto doesn’t even have a hand on the wheel!
: Ryuji looks like he’s just died of fright.
: Not canon. I mean, the part with Yusuke not looking is. This is what happens when you outsource - they never read the goddamn notes.
: I… I don’t think I get it. Is Morgana one of those driver’s ed vehicles where there’s a brake on both sides? If that’s not a handbrake, what the fuck is it?
: Somewhere, at an anime studio in what is probably Croatia, Fred (the janitor who worked in the building where they made Nausicaa and creative consultant for Ni No Kuni 2) goes over the finalized storyboard for the “desert bus” scene.
: “Boss, none of this makes sense! Why does Ann have a handbrake on her side? Even if that’s not a handbrake, why does her reclining the seat back cause Joker to go flying? This is turning into another Ni No Kuni 2, and I haven’t even worked on that yet!”
: “And boss, the character notes say that Joker isn’t horny! Why is he horny?” Fred’s boss coughs. “Just fucking ship it. It’ll be fine.”
: “The AC ain’t workin’ at all! What the hell was that lukewarm air about!?”
: “That was the best I could do, so quit your yapping!”
: Sadly, Morgana would probably win that fight. Ryuji is the slowest character in the game, making him P5’s equivalent of Mark.
: “Geez, shut up! It’s hot, so don’t make me more irritated!”
: “To think her Palace would be a pyramid…”
: “Yes. It’s a pharaoh’s tomb.”
: “That’s how it’s mostly known. There are a variety of theories on it. For instance, it’s even said to be a device for reviving the dead.”
: “Reviving the dead, hm? It’s beautiful nonetheless… it’s perfectly conformed to the golden ratio…”
: “Hey, guys, can we go in already? I’m gonna melt…”
: The game kind of distracts you by showing you a couple of side paths on the map, but there’s not a whole lot there.
: By the way, remember how I told you to look at the party’s feet? Go a couple of shots up and take another look. Where they got their shoes from, I have no idea.
: The pyramid is very technology-themed. The pillars outside are covered in unicode, and the “2010” leads me to believe that it was copy-pasted from a registry entry in Windows.
: One side of the pyramid has this big structure with nothing on it. I don’t remember if it ever gets used or not.
: There’s a closed gate on the other side, which is how we’ll be getting in once we come back to actually clear this place.
: “Who knows what may await us within… what is your call, Joker? Shall we head inside?”
: The worst part is that we could stomp everything in this dungeon today without buying new equipment.
: “Okay. We’ll find out more about Futaba’s secrets in here, right?”
: “Indeed. Well, let’s head inside.”
: “It may be because Futaba’s room in reality has AC pumping through it. Either way, this is a relief.”
: “Huh, our clothes still haven’t changed even now. This has never happened to us before.”
: Take a drink every time Ann states the obvious.
: “It is refreshing that she doesn’t see us as a threat… but we are completely surrounded by walls.”
: “I guess this is a tomb… it’s probably not made to be easy to get into. Anyway, let’s explore.”
: “There’s way too goddamn many…”
: “Don’t ask for too much. You should be happy we’re not being attacked as we ascend. More importantly, I can totally sense the Treasure ahead. We’re getting pretty close now!”
: “These stairs seem to be headed into the heart of the pyramid. I wonder if that’s where the Treasure awaits…”
: Seriously, what is it with the party and stating things we can clearly see?
: “Welp, time to keep climbin’ then. Let’s go.”
: You can pretty clearly see what the gimmick of the pyramid is going to be - there’s doors on either side of the stairs that are gated off, and indentations in the walls that are going to become locked doors once we get this thing started.
: Oh yeah, like a laser hallway where everyone but Ryuji makes it through because he’s too busy looking at the weird holes in the walls. I wish the PSP version of Eternal Punishment was localized.
: Speaking of which, I’ve heard that the PSP version was widely considered not as good as the PS1 original, but the PS1 version’s translation is garbage.
: My favorite thing about this dungeon is that this is the only one where you can run from the start of the dungeon to the end on the day you fight the boss without fighting anything.
: “That’s Futaba’s Shadow. It isn’t the real her.”
: I was seriously considering making a “No fucking shit!” counter but then I realized we’d be well into the triple digits at this point.
: “Oh yeah, you’ve seen her face. True. This one’s kinda dressed like a queen.”
: “So you’re Futaba Sakura…”
: “Hey, where’s the Treasure?”
: “It’s doubtful that you wouldn’t know where it is.”
: “Hey, say somethin’.”
: “Don’t be like that! I’m sorry, Futaba-chan. It’s okay, there’s no need to be scared. So, can you tell us where your most treasured possession is?”
: Yusuke’s right though. Where has the plot actually gone since the start of the game?
: Honestly, you could probably remove the first three dungeons altogether and the plot would still be largely the same.
: “Let’s just leave her.”
: “Will you guys shut up for a bit!?”
: Well, this is weird. As it turns out, the Megami Tensei wiki doesn’t have a portrait for Futaba’s shadow. Guess I’ll just have to use her regular one.
: “Those who plunder my tomb. Why have you come?”
: “She talked… but…”
: “What’re you sayin’? You want us to steal it, right?”
: “If you believe you can steal it, then try as you might.”
: “That’s rather defiant-sounding.”
: “What are these voices?”
: They’re not subtitled, so I have no idea. You can hear a woman and a man shouting something, but I’m not turning on the English dub to find out what.
: “This is horrible…”
: “Hey, the hell is this?”
: “What was that!?”
: “She sees us as a threat now… what’s going on!?”
: I should mention that normally, Futaba is walking product placement. Her post-dungeon portrait wears a pair of red AKG headphones - in fact, AKG released a model that looks like the ones she wears.
: They were $400 and from what I remember were generally considered to be poor quality. I recall seeing a few photos from Japanese blogs of the pads disintegrating after a couple of months.
: “This… again… that’s right… I killed Mom. I don’t deserve to be alive… this place is a tomb… I’ll die here…”
: One thing I didn’t really think about much until I played Strikers is that half the cast are orphans. It’s my personal canon that at the end of the game, Joker goes home and is relieved that no one in the party will discover he has no parents.
: “This is bad - I’m having a hard time getting a grasp of our situation. We should regroup and-”
: Nothing about that last line makes any sense. How can you regroup? You’re already together!
: Someone on the Megami Tensei wiki actually tracked what that bar code is from - it’s from a third-party video cable for the PS3… and also the Wii for some reason.
: “We’re safe… that was too close.”
: “Now what!?”
: “Even if we wanted to ask Futaba what’s going on, it seems the door is shut. What should we do?”
: “I think our best option is retreating for now. This won’t be as simple as we expected. Why don’t we prepare a little more, then come back?”
: The only reason we’re not stomping the shit out of this dungeon is that the game won’t let us.
: “True. Then let’s retreat for now and return to the Palace another day.”
: “In order to stop them, we need to help Futaba Sakura before the 21st. Our deadline is about two days prior, so the 19th.”
: “Meetin’ up in Shibuya then comin’ here’s a pain, right? Let’s make this place our hideout for a while.”
: “Is everyone fine with this place being our next hideout then?”
: “We must take care not to be discovered by Boss.”
: “There’s no telling what may happen inside that pyramid. We all need to be cautious so that place doesn’t become our graveyard.”
: “Man, this is gonna be one crazy summer vacation. We’re dealin’ with international hackers and lookin’ for a Treasure in a pyramid.”
: “How can you be enjoying this!? This is a crisis of whether or not our group continues, you know!?”
: “I know that!”
: “That reminds me. While we were in the Mona Car, you were staring at me with a dirty look, you perv.”
: “Shuddup! It was a great view! You guys were lookin’ too, am I right!?”
: Joker pulls out the air horn.
: “Indeed. The pyramid’s golden ratio was truly a sight to behold.”
: “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ about…”
: Joker points. “Don’t listen to him. He’s thirsty for human women.”
: “Will we be all right like this?”
: This is something that is brought up here and then never gets brought up again. It’s implied that the “hallucinations” are actually a by-product of having a Palace, but we never see this with any of the other bosses.
: Tonight, we need to do something that is kinda bullshit. Remember how I said back in Madarame’s dungeon that we didn’t need a Hierophant persona until August? I was a little off.
: The guide has us clean Leblanc, which gives a small amount of kindness and also a point (two with matching Persona) to Sojiro’s confidant.
: Keep in mind that this happens after almost a solid week where we haven’t been able to do anything, including visiting the Velvet Room. Fortunately, we fused that bullshit overpowered Anzu.
: I don’t believe this is a permafuck if you don’t have a matching Persona. It’s only a one point loss, and we’ll have the ability to buy confidant points from Chihaya soon. Even without that, we’d still have spare nights in September if we really needed them.
: There’s even a trophy for it, and I have no idea why.
: “If we want Futaba’s help, we’re gonna have to steal her Treasure by the day before the deadline. So we have to find the Treasure by the 18th, and send the calling card by the 19th. It’s up to you when we go to the Palace, but keep the deadline in mind, all right?”
: “Oh no, Joker, I got an A- and not an A and now I’m afraid I’m going to stop being THE SMART GIRL.”
: “I couldn’t agree more… the truth is… recently I’ve started questioning the entire point of my education. What do I stand to gain from getting good grades and living up to the high expectations my sister has set for me?”
: “I spoke to Eiko about this matter as well, but the answer hasn’t become any clearer.”
: “You don’t remember her? Eiko Takao. We asked her about the job she has at the ‘salon’ in Shinjuku.”
: Oh wow, that’s one of the few legit typos I’ve seen in this game.
: “Because of those calls, we’ve actually grown somewhat close. When I voiced my concerns to her, she asked me how I would benefit from going to a top university… but… I couldn’t come up with a good answer.”
: “As for Eiko, her grades are… not the best, but she claims she doesn’t even think about that stuff. Apparently her parents can use their connections to find her a job…”
: “But isn’t that a little irresponsible? It’s nice she can rely on her parents, but this is her life, not theirs. …I guess that’s just a different way of approaching things.”
: “Even at that, her vision of the future is still clearer than mine.”
: “… I used to think doing what others expected of me was the best way forward. I was going to major in law, just like my sister did. And after that, I would simply have headed down whatever path society had made for me.”
: “But everything changed when I joined the Phantom Thieves. I’ve realized now there are more important things in life than being a prim and proper honor student.”
: So what you’re saying is that you’re a less interesting Elly… even though there’s a party member who basically IS Elly?
: “Honestly, I would have looked down on Eiko’s line of thinking in the past… but I know better now.”
: “Lately, Eiko’s been telling me whenver she buys makeup or finds a cute new outfit. That reminds me, she asked me the other day what hand cream I use.”
: “I sent her a picture… and it’s apparently the same brand they use in the nurse’s office at school.”
: “That stuff works wonders for dry skin, and it’s great value too. My father used to use it all the time. …Did I ever tell you he was a police officer?”
: So yes, there is a correct response for asking Makoto about her fucking hand cream. That is what this game has come to.
: The worst part is that her reminding Joker who her father was is just kind of rubbing in how much of a fucking ripoff she is.
: “He detested the corruption in our society and worked tirelessly to bring it to justice… but despite the rough exterior, he was extremely gentle deep down.”
: “When I was little, I told him I wanted to grow up to be a police officer, just like he was. He was glad to hear me say that, but quick to point out that he didn’t want me doing something so dangerous.”
: “I had completely forgotten about that dream, to be honest.”
: “I suppose… either way, after everything that happened… I have no intention of working with the police. Besides, they’re trying to stop the Phantom Thieves. What am I supposed to do, arrest myself?”
: “Hm… I think I need to reexamine what my goals for the future are, outside of just plain studying. You know, it feels like I remembered something important today thanks to you.”
: “I guess you could say my viewpoint has been broadened yet again.”
: “When I met Eiko, I realized how narrow my viewpoint really was. I only just learned recently that a chemise is now called a camisole, and a button-down sweater is a cardigan…”
: So wait, is this actually a time travel plot and Makoto is actually from the 1880s or something?
: “Why does the same thing have multiple names? I guess in the end, I’m just becoming more aware of how little I really know.”
: We have a bunch of stuff to do tonight. First, we need to go to Chihaya and get a boost to Kindness.
: Next, we feed the plant. With the boost, this is 7 points to Kindness.
: The guide has us go after an item from this vending machine at Iwai’s to trade. It took me like six reloads to get, and then I permafucked.
: The item you need is the “MRE Ration” and I believe you can only use this machine once a day.
: We can trade the MRE Ration for a Factorization Guide, which boosts knowledge gained from studying by 2. I thought this was a requirement to not permafuck but as it turns out we never actually study again.
: In fact, I’m not entirely sure why the guide has us get this in the first place. There was a trophy for reading all the books in the base game, but that trophy was removed from Royal. The only reason I can think of is there might be a Thieves Den thing for it now.
: Basically, the guide I’m using is bunk. Anyway, now we can visit Chihaya again. This is the point where I permafucked and didn’t realize it.
: “This is your first time coming to my stand, yes?”
: “Of course! Fate is… absolute.”
: “That’s wonderful! Congratulations! So, what’s worrying you? Is it the date of the ceremony, or perhaps the location of your honeymoon?”
: I wasn’t sure how big of a thing arranged marriages actually are in Japan, so I looked it up. Like the question of whether or not Kawakami is a prostitute, the answer is complicated.
: Japan has this long-standing practice of what’s called “Omiai”, which means “look-meet”. According to Japanese government data, before World War II, 69% of marriages were done this way.
: In the Pre-WWII period, Omiai was basically arranged marriage the way you’d think of it in feudal Europe: marriage done purely for political or financial gain.
: Omiai is kind of attributed as one of the reasons for the birthrate issue in Japan: in an Omiai marriage, everything was based on financial and employment standards that very few people could meet.
: Anyway, there’s still Omiai marriages these days, but they only account for like 5 to 6 percent of all marriages. As I understand it, they’re also much less formal.
: These days, there’s a whole matchmaking industry (including matchmakers owned by the government, weirdly enough) that has replaced Omiai.
: There’s a term for it that I won’t use because the guy who came up with it sounds like a fucking asshole who doesn’t understand basic socioeconomic issues.
: “Ah… so this is what it means to be weighed down by societal obligations.”
: “Please relax. The divine power will bring us your answer! Yes, I’ve seen everything. My… it seems you will face financial ruin if you decline…”
: “Um, Kurusu-san? This may be a good time to demonstrate your powers. This man is bound by the fetters of societal obligation… how should he move forward?”
: “Oh, that’s a wonderful suggestion! Though I guess anyone could have come up with that answer… incidentally, what would you say to make him choose his childhood friend?”
: “You know, not me because I’m into Yusuke, but… you know, thieves.”
: “Thieves…? She’s not a child.”
: Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
: “It’s happened again… so, you have altered fate once more… his fortune now states he will be quite successful. I had questioned your powers, but this is the third time…”
: “I have no choice… I must accept that fate can, in fact, be changed. You’ve proven that to me. And as a sign of thanks for showing me the truth… I’ll provide a special fortune service for you from now on!”
: Yes. The Greatest Weapon in the Phantom Thieves Arsenal just got even better. Money Reading doubles all money gained after ending a battle with an All-Out.
: “I see… I wish there was a way I could meet one… but for now, that wish only reminds me of my inability to change my own fate…”
: “M-My, it’s gotten so late! I should start packing up for today. I’ll see you next time! Farewell.”
: What you are about to witness is a permafuck in action.
: Can you guess the one arcana I don’t have a Persona for right now? The best part is that if we leave Leblanc tomorrow, we CANNOT RETURN FOR ANY REASON and miss out on that event forever.
: Next time, we’ll have a day in with Yusuke, another day in with Ryuji, have a suspicious gap where Kawakami’s Rank 10 scene should be, and make it to the day before we infiltrate the palace.
: This update’s going to be shorter than it should be, but that’s fine.
: “Oh, and I brought an art book I would like to read with you… if we are not planning to infiltrate today, why don’t we search for ideas between the pages of this book?”
: Fortunately, I deleted Nigi Mitama off-screen: we don’t do anything with Maruki until September. We have the Persona for this.
: This is one of the first confidant events you wouldn’t see on the reset-heavy route. If this were the reset-heavy route, we’d be fighting the boss today.
: “This is also a fine place to relax and enjoy a good book. Yes, I’ll be visiting more often. You know, I never asked… what kind of art do you like?”
: Joker spits out his coffee. “Look, Yusuke, I really think we should save that for marriage. Nothing good can come of talking about art preferences before then.”
: “Yes, of course. You judge art on a piece-by-piece basis, not by genre. I’ve been blind this whole time… looking at something without any preconceived notions… is this what it means to ask the heart?”
: Joker wipes the sweat from his brow. “Thank YHVH that’s over.”
: “Thank you for sharing your opinion. It was enlightening.”
: For this, we get five points to Charm and three points to Yusuke’s confidant.
: During scenes like these, we can ask whoever Joker’s with to go get coffee or go to the bathhouse. Unfortunately, this is where I had to do Kawakami’s rank 10 scene.
: On a side note, I found out today that Umamusume (a garbage single-interest anime about racehorses turned into anime girls) has a character named Kawakami Princess and as far as I’m concerned it is now canon that Kawakami does the whole Helltaker furry bit only as a horse for her Rank 10.
: Kawakami: “Bam! I’m an anime horse now! High schoolers love horses, right?”
: Joker: “I am getting the air horn.”
: Instead, we do a crossword puzzle and then do Kawakami’s rank 10 off screen.
: This is another scene you wouldn’t see on the reset-heavy route.
: We have a message from Kasumi that we’re forced to look at. We’re nearly maxed out with her until after the end of the base game, and will finish her confidant on the 10th.
: “Sorry to bother you while you’re enjoying your after-meal coffee… but I’m gonna open up shop soon. You either need to go upstairs or get out of here.”
: “Alibaba doesn’t know what’s happening. I’m sure she’s getting anxious… we’ll just have to try and appease her for a while…”
: “It’s really something to see, man. So if we’re not gonna be meetin’ up with the others, wanna read?”
: “The fight between the main guy and his rival really gets me goin’. I want 'em both to win! So, hey. Who do you usually root for? The main hero or the rival?”
: Neither, because I’ve been over shonen battle garbage for years. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.
: “Oh, really? Me too! Rival characters are cool, but things don’t always work out for ‘em. I really get that. Gah, I gotta keep readin’… it’s cool if I read the whole thing here, right?”
: I love how unrealistic this scene is. This is 2016, Ryuji would be reading that either on a laptop or on his phone. Anyway, we get five points to Guts and three to Ryuji’s confidant.
: Unfortunately, we’ve got more stats to grind.
: We need to go to Chihaya quick and get a boost to Guts.
: Two things I immediately wonder: does she call it “Yakuza” in the Japanese script, and does Persona exist as a movie in the Yakuza universe?
: I got an answer. In the Japanese script, it’s apparently a reference to a yakuza film called Outrage, which is also directed by Takeshi Kitano.
: Persona 5 takes place right around the same time Yakuza 6 does, so I’m imagining a 50+ year old Kiryu sitting in a movie theater and going “Man, this franchise really jumped the shark.”
: This, by the way, is not the only time Yakuza comes up in Persona 5. In Strikers (which released in Japan right around the same time Yakuza 7 did), Makoto talks about how she wants to see “Dragon: Like a Yakuza” in the theater.
: Ten points to Guts. Guts takes a total of 113 points to max, so we’ve gotten just over 10% of the total points we need to max it in one day.
: Funny enough though, Guts isn’t the first stat we’re going to max.
: “Um… do you think it’s weird if a girl likes movies like this?”
: “R-Really!? Thanks… I think this is the first time I’ve been told that. Sorry that I called you over so suddenly. It felt weird watching a yakuza film all by myself…”
: “I had fun, though, thanks to you. Okay, let’s start heading home.”
: Here’s the worst part of this. We’d have to do this even if we were on the reset-heavy route, because Atlus hates everyone.
: “Sorry for dragging you along.”
: I have to wonder if Akechi is like Lothric in Dark Souls 3 in that he was born in that sweater-vest and has worn nothing but the sweater-vest since birth.
: “I’m glad you like it. This suits you, huh? I wasn’t sure if you were the type.”
: “And we even got the second detective prince here, too - w-wait, what!?”
: “Uh, I’m just here for material on a fluff piece. Date spots for kids these days, that kinda thing. But what’s not important! Why are you with Akechi-kun?”
: I feel like they kind of forgot that Ohya works for a copyright-friendly version of Japan’s largest daily newspaper and not a teen magazine like Maya did. In fact, I’m not sure Hashino knew she wasn’t Maya.
: “I invited him out. We’re fairly close, after all. You are, huh…?”
: “Oh, uh… don’t mind me. I’m just a reporter. But who would have guessed you were friends with the famous teen detective? And unlike you, he’s pretty hardline anti-Phantom-Thieves, right? Mind if I ask a couple questions about you two?”
: “Oh, you’re down? I was just kidding. I’m no model journalist, but I’m not dumb enough to pry into a high schooler’s private life. I thought this report would be boring, but I got a nice surprise out of it.”
: “Well, see you next time I need info.”
: “You have some friends in the media, I see. And if I heard right, you two have some sort of professional agreement?”
: “Oh, I wasn’t worrying about that. Of course, if you have to explicitly deny it, then… no, just a joke. I’m sorry if I’m prying. You truly are interesting.”
: We’re going to start Iwai’s confidant tonight, but first… shopping time.
: The key thing here is to buy the Elysian Robe for Ann and Makoto, because the next boss’s favorite thing is spamming fear.
: “That was a custom gun that I modified to make it look as real as possible. …I had a customer who was interested in it. You helped me out by smugglin’ it outta here so that I didn’t get caught by those detectives.”
: “…You’re an accomplice now, so don’t go snitchin’. I got everything on my security camera.”
: Yeah, sure. “Custom gun” and not an actual handgun.
: “Look, the one you gave me only had one anime girl on it. I want one with the entire cast of Love Live on it, and I’m sure you have one.”
: “Huh… wanna talk in the back?”
: Joker has read exactly three pages of Upotte, which is about two more pages than most people are capable of reading.
: “…At your age? …Well, I guess you got the heart of an enthusiast. Heh, you’re a strange one, kid.”
: “…Wait a sec. chuckle Yeah, this could work. Hey, I can grant that wish of yours… but you better have the money. These things are worth hundreds of thousands of yen per unit. Sometimes they even reach the millions, depending on how I feel.”
: “S’that right? Look, I ain’t a bad dude. I’ve been known to compromise, from time to time. For example… you help me out with my ‘business’… smugglin’ goods, destroyin’ evidence… and as a reward, I’ll introduce you to the special menu, with good prices for a punk like you.”
: Iwai once attempted to save the President from being kidnapped by ninjas but just kind of gave up halfway through.
: “…Whaddya say? Not bad, huh?”
: “That’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know. Gotta fight evil with evil… I need a pawn of my own. Don’t talk to no one about this. Got it? Just follow my orders.”
: He joined guns as an industry to end guns as an industry.
: “Now what’s it gonna be? You gonna take my deal or what?”
: “…That’s fine. Okay, I’ll work on that special menu for you. You should be grateful.”
: Can you believe we only have two more confidants left?
: “Oh, yeah. When I don’t got any business goin’ on, I’ll have you do some miscellaneous chores. Clean… run errands… there’s plenty for you to do around here. Must be pretty excitin’ for an enthusiast like you, huh?”
: “When I text you from that ID, it’ll be ‘cause I need help around the shop. Just so you know, if you get caught or anything, I never met ya. Nothin’ to do with me. We clear?”
: “If you want somethin’, you’re gonna have to work for it.”
: “Yeesh. Take it easy there, cowboy. You’re that eager to get into it, huh? I’ll send a message when everything’s ready. Hope I can count on you, kid.”
: I went back to the shop before doing anything to show off gun customization. You can equip one part, and it’s expensive enough that it’s usually not worth doing until near the end of the game.
: Then I stop off at Chihaya again, because it is time to sit.
: “This couch reminds me of Yusuke. I will buy it with the $3,000 I still have on me, and it will become our couch with no felines or horny people allowed.”
: “More comfortable than you will ever know.”
: Three points to Guts. I want a scene where Joker takes this couch to Leblanc and during the next Phantom Thieves meeting no one realizes Yusuke is there because he just blends right in.
: “Well, I was thinking of getting in shape first. And who better to help with that than Ryuji, right? Why don’t you join in too, Akira? We can train together!”
: “It’s pretty sweet, huh? Not too many people gettin’ in your way. Anyways, uh… what’re you tryin’ to do here?”
: “I want to slim down!”
: “Huh. You tried joggin’?”
: “Aerobics alone aren’t enough! I want to tone up too, so I need to start lifting weights. Plus my shoulders are drooping, I wanna make my biceps leaner, and I need to straighten my back out!”
: I’m surprised Ann doesn’t have some kind of back issue given her posture in battle.
: So what you’re saying is that YOU ARE HUGE, THEREFORE YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS! RIP AND TEAR! RIP AND TEAR YOUR GUTS! RIP AND TEAR! HERE COMES THE NIGHT TRAIN!
: “Uh, what the hell’s that even supposed to mean…? Anyways, motivation’s good n’ all, but you’re not gonna be able to move tomorrow if you do all that shit.”
: “Then you come up with a training regimen for me.”
: “Ugh, you’re such a pain.”
: “Eff that. Quit thinkin’ you’re some sexy character in an anime. It’s sad watchin’ you like this.”
: “What!?”
: “First off, one of them sexy characters’d never come to the gym in their PE uniform.”
: “How am I supposed to know that!? I’ve never even been to the gym before today!”
: “Hi! Oh, yes. Definitely. Even a smaller article would be great! Huh…? It fell through? Yeah… Uh, I guess that’s okay… Mm-hm…”
: “I was supposed to be in two magazines the month after next, but apparently one cancelled on me. It was a black-and-white shoot, so they said I wouldn’t stand out.”
: “It sounded like fun though. It was about the everyday life of models…”
: “Guess you just gotta find somewhere you do stand out then.”
: “Huh… there has to be somewhere my vibrant charm will shine, right!?”
: “Yeah!”
: “Uh, where…? Hey, speakin’ of magazines, there was a real pretty girl in that one you said you were starrin’ in. She’s got this innocent vibe, but she’s sexy too. Now that’s what real charm looks like to me.”
: What you are about to witness is Ryuji walking right into his own death.
: “…Were there photos of me too?”
: “Uh, yeah.”
: “…And did she have long, brown hair?”
: “Yup, that’s the one! You know her!? You gotta introduce me, dude!”
: You know what? This scene didn’t suck. I think it’s the only one in Ann’s entire confidant I don’t hate, because it’s actually about Ann and not about Shiho or Mika.
: It kind of fills all the checkboxes. It’s a scene that’s actually about Ann [✓], doesn’t repeat information we already know [✓], and doesn’t overstay its welcome [✓].
: “But for some reason… I feel… satisfied…”
: “That’s what workin’ hard feels like. Not bad, huh?”
: “Yeah, that was actually… pretty fun. I think it was because the two of you were here with me. I had to prove I was working extra hard.”
: “It’s simple stuff like that that’ll help you keep pushin’.”
: “Dammit, I wish I had thought of that…”
: “Uh, this ain’t a competition.”
: “Mom forgot to buy stuff for dinner, so I guess I gotta head home now. Seeya, guys.”
: Joker reaches a hand out. “Wait. Put her on speakerphone.” Ryuji starts sweating, as he too is a secret orphan.
: “Ryuji just can’t say no when his mom needs help, huh. …I’m actually a little jealous of the relationship they have. I mean even growing up, my parents were super busy.”
: “They always told me I was strong, that I’d be fine on my own. I was free… but I was lonely. I’d make friends, but we moved a lot… and every time, I had to start all over again.”
: Did I say I didn’t hate this cutscene? Scratch that, it should’ve ended right when Ryuji left, and now Ann’s telling us shit we already know.
: “I actually got used to the loneliness… but that all changed once I met Shiho… the world seemed so hopeful. I heard her rehab is going well… she’s going to be officially transferring schools soon too…”
: God dammit this was SO CLOSE to being a good scene. So fucking close.
: “I need to show her that I’m working hard… and that she doesn’t need to worry so much about me.”
: “Right. She needs to see how much I’ve learned from her…!”
: I thought about it for a while, and I realized that if you think about it, we know less about Ann than we do about Makoto - even though this is Ann’s Rank 8 event and we’re at Rank 4 with Makoto.
: “Come on, let’s go home. …I might have trouble moving though. My legs are killing me.”
: Well, weird place to insert this, but while I was working on this update, I got a message on Twitter about what the phone says when the party is guessing for the navigation app.
: According to this, the phone is saying 該当しません which translates to “Not Found”.
: “Gah! Oogh… my muscles are so sore right now… going home took me more than twice as long as usual… but I’m really proud of the work I put in today. I would’ve just given up if I went alone.”
: “I’m so glad I had you guys with me. You two are the best! …I wonder if this is how Shiho felt with her rehab? Being able to push herself becomes someone was there with her.”
: “Wait, but what if she flat-out denied it!? That’d be so sad and embarrassing! But, well… no matter what, I’m gonna stay by Shiho’s side. I want to stick with her until the very end.”
: “Not much time left now until Shiho switches schools… I need to up my coolness so she can take off without worrying about me. …Gah! Oh! I forgot how sore I was…”
: We now need to use that Guts boost we got for a second trip to Kichijoji. I don’t know how you’re supposed to find half this stuff without a guide.
: Across from the accessory store is this building, which you can never go in and as far as I know doesn’t serve any real purpose. In fact, you might not even know what it is just looking at it.
: What’s kind of funny is that “Donut Shop” is actually the name of the business and not just a description. I had to look up the katakana because I’m bad with it, but it reads “Donut Shop 360”.
: “Here’s a pop quiz. How many donuts do you think this sign has?”
: “Mewhehe… are you sure about that?”
: “Do you think you got it right? The answer is…! Nope! Too bad! The answer’s 10! Did you see the donut on the left? That counts as one.”
: “Sorry to poke fun at you. But wasn’t it pretty exciting?”
: You get two points to Guts either way - three in our case because of the bonus. I’ll get it right in my next recording because I may have accidentally permafucked the 31st without saving again.
: We spend the night with Chihaya. Unfortunately, we don’t rank up.
: Next time, we’ll infiltrate the pyramid, kill most enemies in one hit, get Lilim to be even more overpowered, get amazing RNG, and make another bullshit overpowered Persona.
For two updates in a row now, I’ve put all my comments in an unsaved Notepad, and then just sort of left them around for long enough that you made a new update before I bothered to actually post them. So have some vintage Update 45 replies while I read Update 46…
Was I missing something, or did the game go “There’s going to be a school assembly” hard cut “Well there sure was a school assembly”?
And…
its not a real pyramid its the symbolic mental construct of a nerd who’s never even seen a real pyramid
Major props to that dude. Doing the important work. Now please hack Digital Devil Saga and find out what the damage formulas are. My children are dying inconvenienced by potentially inefficient stat distribution.
It seems that way, right? No, you’re not missing anything - they tell you there’s going to be an assembly and then they cut away from it. You might think that it’s something that was in the base game and removed for Royal… but that’s actually not the case, it wasn’t in the base game either.
Look, all Yusuke wants is his own Louvre pyramid.
I guess it’s just the nature of LPing but it feels like it’s taken a long time to get to what it feels like Makoto’s story should’ve been about. Also there is no way Makoto likes knockoff Yakuza because someone questioning the value in formal education and doing the “right thing” idolizes a protagonist following their own code at all times. I do not give the writers even a quarter of the credit required for that.
: Morgana forces us to enter the hideout, even though we’re going to do the dungeon today anyway. The problem is that we have a few things we need to do first.
: Like practically every day, we need to visit Chihaya… except today, we need to visit Chihaya twice. The first time is to boost Charm, the second time is for a Money Reading.
: We also need to grip and sip. Don’t forget that, because I actually did. Twice. The first time was because I went right to the dungeon, the second time was because I forgot to do Chihaya first.
: “…Battle tactic? Ohhh, you mean the stuff we talked about before the summer festival, right? Yup, still got it.”
: “Very good.”
: “What are you guys talking about?”
: “We’re simply discussing how it’s important to spice up our battle tactics here and there.”
: “Spice up your…?”
: “Eh, don’t worry about it! We’ve got something crazy to show you later!”
: “Oh yeah, all the other ones until now have just been normal cities outside of the distortion itself.”
: “Thanks to that, we didn’t even know we were in a Palace our first time goin’ into Kamoshida’s.”
: “That’s still part of the Palace though. The city may not have been distorted, but it was cognition. The Palace rulers may have been criminals, but they were social enough to know the city layout.”
: “But Futaba probably doesn’t… in fact, I bet she isn’t even interested in the outside world.”
: “Hence why the whole thing is a bleak desert… understandable, considering her lifestyle.”
: “I doubt many famous criminals are shut-ins like her though. Hopefully that means we won’t have to go through all this desert business in the future.”
: “That might not necessarily be the case. Many upper-class citizens travel by limo or plane, so they don’t know or care about city life…”
: “A plane…?! Damn, that sounds pretty good! I mean, wouldn’t you want to go to a Palace wayyyy up above the clouds if you could?”
: “I think a flying bank is quite enough, thanks…”
: “I have to say though, the topic of the area outside the distortion is fascinating. Depending on the criminal, there may be an exact replica of Tokyo within their Palace. I would love to examine the aesthetics of such a strange place at least once.”
: Funny he should say that, because the first dungeon in Strikers is Shibuya with a filter over it.
: “You don’t got a damn thing but art in that head of yours, huh?”
: “But it’s true that an observant criminal could have a true to reality city in their Palace… although even if such a place did exist, it’s not like we’d have any use for it.”
: The inside of the pyramid is now wrecked from the boulder… except for all the stairs the boulder rolled through to get here, which as we’ll see in a bit are untouched.
: I feel like “We might have to give up on it” was a common phrase in the writer’s room for this game.
: “No point sittin’ around though. Whaddya wanna do, Joker?”
: “Not a bad idea. Considering how humongous this building is, there have be other ways in.”
: “We will have to investigate every suspicious place we see, both inside the pyramid and out.”
: “Ugh, outside!? You mean we gotta deal with that heat again!?”
: “No complaining. Let’s begin our investigation right away.”
: So let’s leave, and then…
: “Yeah, I wonder why - I can’t believe you tried to crush us with an effing boulder! You want us to steal your goddamn Treasure or not?”
: “Hm, why don’t we make a deal? You wish to proceed further, yes?”
: “A deal, you say?”
: “There is a town nearby. I would like you to take back that which the bandit there stole from me.”
: "Oh yeah, I think I remember seeing a town on the way here.’
: “If you bring what was stolen back to me, I will give you a reward. I’ll even tell you how to proceed.”
: “Can’t you tell us any more details? Anything about this bandit, or what was stolen?”
: “You’ll learn all the information you need to know once you arrive.”
: “She said it’s nearby… we could probably see it from here, right?”
: “Good point. Let us observe the surroundings and search for any towns that may lie about here.”
: This part I don’t quite understand. They drove right past the town on the way here, and it’s the only town in this entire desert.
: They should’ve coded this so if you’ve already done this the first visit, Morgana would just go “Oh right, we saw that town the last time we were here. Do you want to just go there?”
: “Hey, isn’t that a town off in the distance?”
: “Yes, I can see what appear to be buildings over there.”
: “Want to head over to the town, Joker? It’s pretty far away, so this is my chance to shine!”
: And now we’re in… wait a second, isn’t this just de_dust2?
: We run into what is either Sandman or that one McDonalds commercial from the 1980s.
: Ann exploits their fire weakness and off we go.
: I could’ve negotiated, but then the red “show me the money” option came up and one thing kind of led to another and soon I was performing the Greatest Weapon in the John Persona Arsenal.
: There is uh, one minor problem though. Joker is so disgustingly overpowered that it’s kind of hard to not instakill things.
: This isn’t even close to the best I can do with the Greatest Weapon. Also as it turns out, the guide on Gamefaqs is wrong - I think the boost from Money Reading is actually 50%, not double.
: “Hm? What does he mean by ‘trader’?”
: “We don’t care about your welcomes. You’re a bandit, right? Just cough up the thing you stole.”
: “Wait! Ughhh, you just had to scare him off, Skull!”
: “Me!?”
: “We’ll have time to talk later. Let’s get after him.”
: I didn’t get a shot of the entire map, but this area is basically a maze with a couple of enemies in it, and then the big square area where we just met that shadow.
: That other red do you can see on the map is an Anzu, seen here being nuked by Makoto. God dammit Makoto that’s not how you do it, let me show you how you do it.
: Believe it or not, Joker one-shotting everything like this is kind of a problem when we go to perform the Greatest Weapon.
: The final encounter here was another Sandman, so I grabbed him solely for compedium completion.
Fairy who sprinkles magical sand into the eyes of children to make them sleep. Those who resist get their faces sat on, those who still resist get their eyes gouged out.
: Sandman is the definition of a trash-sona: horrible resistances, godawful moveset and really low offensive stats. I think I deleted Sandman the moment we got him because he’s not even good as fusion fuel.
: I remembered this part being kind of annoying in the base game, and so I looked up the archived LP of it and it’s actually the same.
: “We’ll never catch him if we do nothing but follow his path… we should corner him somewhere.”
: “Corner him? But how?”
: “Let’s use that square from earlier. We sneak around him and trap him in there!”
: All you have to do is run around the other side, and the shadow will run back to the big square.
: “Don’t talk to us like we’re the same as you! We came here to save Futaba-chan! Now give us back what you stole!”
: We’re up against Garuda, who in the base game was the first Persona to naturally learn Wind Amp. We’re uh… quite a few levels ahead of the curve on that.
: Garuda has exactly two attacks: Garudyne and Magarudyne. Thankfully, Joker had Anzu equipped, so…
: We actually do this entire fight without Garuda ever landing a blow. Ordinarily, Garuda (like most Wind Personas) is weak to Lightning… but we’re two levels away from being able to break the game with Lightning the way we did with Wind and Ice.
: Instead, we abuse his other weakness: BULLETS.
: Yusuke truly is the best boyfriend.
: And that’s how you fight Garuda without taking damage.
: “Is this… some kind of papyrus parchment? It looks like there’s something written inside.”
: “Hey, no peeking at a girl’s belongings without her permission!”
: “Y’know, just what the hell’s happenin’ in her heart? There’s this bandit, those weird voices sayin’ ‘you killed her’ and who knows what else… it’s a total freakin’ mess.”
: “So does this mean that even though she’s the Palace ruler, she can’t control what happens in here?”
: “I don’t know… I’ve never seen a case like this…”
: “Regardless, we have no more business in this city. Shall we head back, Joker?”
: Huh. There’s a hole where the Sphinx’s head should be. I wonder why that is…
: “Why are you letting them just do whatever they want? This is your Palace, isn’t it?”
: “All that matters is that the map is now yours. Just come further in and… oh.”
: This is pretty much my reaction every time we have to do Maruki’s confidant.
: “Oww… first a boulder, then this… did we piss her off somehow?”
: “I don’t think it has anything to do with us angering her… I suspect the problem is that she can’t control her instinct to push people away from her.”
: “A simple defense mechanism… considering what she’s been through, I don’t blame her for mistrusting others.”
: “Joker, let’s save her! We’ve gotta help Futaba-chan open the door to her heart!”
: “Come on, let’s look for a way back above ground. Otherwise this place is going to end up our tomb too.”
: This entire area is honestly kind of a clusterfuck to navigate. It’s got three levels and only certain parts are connected. This is a little less annoying than it was in the base game.
: We run into Lamia, which I had gotten a couple of times as a result from a fusion accident but didn’t save because I was trying to get Life Aid.
: They’re weak to Nuclear.
: They’re also very weak to ice.
Libyan queen who fell in love with Zeus. Hera murdered all of her children, causing Lamia to go insane and become a baby-eating monster.
: Lamia is another trash-sona that I deleted almost immediately after obtaining. Also, someone should re-write that myth so instead of becoming a monster, Hera curses Lamia with “And now you will be in every bad monster girl anime ever!” Truly a fate worse than death.
: The best description I can give of this room is that you just kinda dick around until you find all the chests or find the door, whichever comes first. There’s nothing really great in any of them… apart from a worrying amount of items meant to protect against instant death spells.
: Oh, is that the sound of an even more bullshit overpowered Lilim? I think it is.
: As soon as we turn the corner, we get into a fight with Thoth.
: I’m not sure if it was an error on Atlus’s part, but for some reason, Thoth is level 36 - he outlevels the red shadow here. He’s not a particularly good Persona… apart from being the only Persona to learn Megido.
: And… fuck. As it turns out, you can negotiate with him for a Megido skill card. I haven’t actually finished recording yet, so I’m going to go back and grab one of those… and then reload until I get it to mutate into Megidolaon via fusion accident.
: There’s two ways we can go - one leads to the obvious exit, and then this room which is a mini-boss. Unfortunately…
: By the way, does anyone else hear anything strange? There’s this weird sound playing over the game audio. I know I’ve heard it before, but I just can’t place it.
: The other way has a red shadow. Let’s do this.
: Red Shadows in Futaba’s Palace are Anubis, and as you can tell from Makoto being dead in this shot, Anubis is not fun to fight.
: Anubis is the ultimate combo of bullshit - he has no weaknesses, has a metric shitload of HP, and has three modes, each of which takes a turn to activate.
: In “Light Mode”, he uses Hamaon to attempt an expel-based instakill. In “Dark Mode”, he uses Mudoon instead. Anubis always gets an extra Press Turn, so he does this TWICE.
: Then there’s “Balance Mode”. I didn’t get a good shot of it, but Balance Mode has Anubis use Maeiga and Makouga to do a shitload of Curse and Bless damage. You can see the aftermath here.
: Fortunately, Yusuke isn’t gonna stand for this.
: “At least we have secured our escape route. We can finally go about exploring this place now.”
: “Let’s use this as our entrance from here forward. It should be more stable than the front.”
: Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to make a quick trip to the Velvet Room.
: Itemizing and resummoning Lilim costs like 20,000 yen… and this is the first of two times I wind up doing it.
: Unfortunately, we can’t really do much else with this alarm. There is a Persona I want to fuse, but we can’t do it just yet.
: While I was in there, I noticed something. During a Fusion Alarm, Caroline and Justine do the fusion dance from DBZ.
: There’s that music again! Is anyone else hearing that? Sounds kinda generic metal-ish?
: Oh fuck. I know what this song is.
: In Nocturne, Mot was a fight so infamously bad it became a meme. He had an ability called Beast Eye (which only enemies could have) that gave him something like seven extra turns every time he used it. It was very possible to die to him without ever getting a turn.
: Fortunately, Mot is pretty slow and has a major weakness to wind.
: He’ll also waste a turn doing this instead of alternating between Beast Eye and Megidolaon like it’s the PonPonPon song.
: Being Rattled (the name of the status effect) is P5’s equivalent of Stone or Stop in Final Fantasy. It removes whoever it hits from the fight.
: ONE MORE GOD REJECTED. Oh, right. He’ll also summon weaker enemies but honestly, we can kill those in one hit.
: This room has a bunch of little platforms we have to jump between, but it’s really not complicated.
: In one corner is this giant ballista.
: If we turn around, there’s a grappling hook spot we can use.
: “Think before you go touching that, okay? It might be a trap. Although, I’m curious about it myself…”
: “As they say, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ Very well.”
: I’m pretty sure ballistas don’t work that way, especially on what appear to be foot-thick blocks of stone. Then again, this is a magic mind ballista.
: “I’m not so sure about that… it looks like pressing that button has changed something in here.”
: “Yes, there is now light being cast on that door. It is a markedly obvious difference.”
: “You’re right. Let’s go take a closer look.”
: “So shining light upon the door is what caused it to unlock…”
: “Wait, doesn’t that mean we can open the door at the great stairs the same way!?”
: “That’s a definite possibility. In any case, we should push on.”
: “Let me see… ‘The light shed by the god of the underworld shall become the sign for those who traverse the pits.’ What could this mean?”
: This is another very vertical area that’s just a lot of holding R2 and climbing.
: Ryuji, we just fought and killed one a few minutes ago.
: “This is Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld. It seems to have some kind of shining orb…”
: I’m really surprised they didn’t change this from the base game. Anubis is the god of the dead, not the god of the underworld.
: “That sounds kinda familiar. Something about light from the god of the underworld?”
: “Hm, this may come in handy somewhere. Shall we take it?”
: Believe it or not, this is actually slightly less tedious than it was in the base game. In the base game, you climbed up sarcophagi to get here instead and the room took longer as a result.
: “The god’s name is Anubis. It really isn’t that hard to remember, Skull…”
: As soon as we grab the second gem, a bunch of sarcophagi in the walls open up and start spewing out shadows. This is actually a good time to farm, because the respawn logic is different than it normally is.
: Normally, it takes either two room transitions or a transition into a save room to respawn enemies. These will pop out enemies as soon as you get close.
: The shadow that popped out of the sarcophagus turned out to be this dungeon’s Treasure Demon - Stone of Scone. We also run into a Naga for the first time here.
: And there goes Joker, doing enough damage with the “flow” buff and a baton pass to kill the entire party twice over and then some. Atlus should’ve coded a thing where if you get a Lilim this overpowered she reverts to her Persona 1 form and starts absorbing everything.
Stone used to coronate Scottish royalty. Later used by the English in their coronation ceremonies.
: If I had some way of making Lilim over again with the same skills but using this thing in the fusion, I would. It’s got all the second-tier single target spells and some really good abilities it can pass down.
: “That means we are directly above where we ended up after coming through the front entrance.”
: I like to think that Yusuke isn’t shocked by the fact that they basically just did a loop, he just gets like that any time he sees architecture.
: “We had to shine light on that one to get it open, right? Do you think this is the same mechanism?”
: I missed a couple of lines here, but let’s be honest, none of them were important anyway.
: We have to put both gems in, and then…
: “All right, we got it!”
: “So shining light upon it is what causes it to open. That is the same as the door underground.”
: “We can’t rest on our laurels though. Let’s stay cautious and proceed forward.”
: “…I don’t know if I’d phrase it like that. Anyway, let’s keep going!”
: The rest of the dungeon is split up into segments like this, with a door that needs to be opened and a second door that leads to where you open it.
: In the save room, we can get a pretty good look at what Futaba’s room looks like.
: I had another fusion alarm proc, but couldn’t quite use it yet.
: “That’s to be expected… we’re basically raiding her tomb, after all. We’d better be cautious as we go, you guys!”
: I fucking HATE how every character has the dumbass anime tic of saying “be cautious” constantly.
: “Talk about a close call… we almost found out what life’s like for a pincushion.”
: “How’re we supposed to get to the other side with the floor like this?”
: “This is the point where we check our surroundings carefully. There has to be something we can use…”
: I don’t know how I caught this, but Joker apparently T-poses while the grappling hook shoots out of what appears to be either his head or his shoulder.
: He then swings through arrows shooting out of the wall…
: And lands. I imagine Ryuji goes “Dude, what the fuck, did you just open your mouth and shoot out a grappling hook while T-posing?”
: On the other side is a room with another Anubis in it, which also has an obvious spike trap in the doorway. I couldn’t capture it working because it’s only on screen for a fraction of a second.
: “Yes, but unless we can do something about this trap, we will not be able to proceed.”
: There’s a hole we can jump over, and on the other side…
: Is Isis. She’s annoying more because she’s weak to Psi damage (and thus not easily instakilled by any of our existing super-nukes) than because she’s an actual threat.
: This next room’s just a lot of jumping across pillars.
: “Hold on, there’s an inscription on this stone slab here… ‘any who attempts to steal this gem shall be cursed…’ uhhh…”
: “Dude, we can’t let this ‘curse’ shit get to us, right? C’mon, let’s just take it.”
: So what does the curse do, you ask? It opens a couple of sarcophagi to spawn enemies, and if we try to progress…
: And also opens up an arrow trap blocking the way forward. What we have to do is return the gem.
: Right past where that arrow trap was, there’s a button we can press.
: Now that the spear trap is disabled, we can grab the gem and backtrack a room to that area.
: We run into Andras, and I think this shot tells you everything you need to know about them.
: I think this was one of the only encounters I skipped - I didn’t do the Anubis in this room because the party was one level away from being able to negotiate with it.
: Itaden Ofuda is another anti-instant death item. They’re basically there for when you go after Anubis.
: It’s a shame this dungeon is so meh design-wise, because it does one interesting thing that’s kind of hard to show off.
: In earlier dungeons, we had a ton of room to move and a ton of places to hide and get ambushes. Outside of me purposely getting spotted (say, to reset a room faster) it’s rare NOT to get an ambush.
: Futaba’s palace puts a lot of enemies on small platforms that are on the other side of a jump. There’s very few places to hide, and so in a lot of cases you’re only just barely getting an ambush.
: In the next room is another Anubis statue, but there’s a trap in front of it. I wish this was like Persona 1 and the game would just make going through the damage floor a viable option.
: Several minutes of running around a big, vertical square area later…
: “Let’s se… ‘Any who attempts to steal this gem shall be cursed…’ wait, it says the same thing!?”
: Does anyone else miss the Resident Evil 1 days of “There is a hole where something could fit. Will you use the gem?” because I sure do and I’ve never even played RE1.
: “But this statue isn’t actually holding a gem… what could be the meaning of this?”
: “Hold up, we got one with us. Wanna try puttin’ it in there?”
: “Hm, the atmosphere has changed in some intangible way… perhaps the curse has been lifted?”
: “That thing wasn’t even holdin’ a gem to start with! It ain’t fair makin’ us put one in! It don’t matter if this is some dog god or whatever… it just ain’t fair!”
: This actually isn’t the one that opens the next main area up. We have one more of those.
: Do you remember how in the other dungeons, finding the will seeds took effort and I almost missed a few of them? When you get here, Morgana will tell you there’s a will seed nearby. Can you guess where it is?
: A decent weapon for Morgana, but we have no reason to use him ever again.
: If you guessed “the will seed room is in this very obvious fork that you can just walk right into” you’re absolutely correct. I think the map designers just kind of gave up.
: This is the last room of this branch of the dungeon.
: “Odd. The design seems to be scrambled somehow.”
: “Maybe it’s kinda like a puzzle? Joker, can you change the puzzle?”
: Welcome to the world’s simplest slider puzzle. I don’t even know why this is here.
: “But what is it a picture of?”
: I think it’s like the artwork in Dwarf Fortress where it corresponds to a historical event only everyone is holding cheese and the cheese is screaming.
: “This adult seems to be reading something to a crying child? Hm, the emotions of the artist are oft depicted in the art they produce… I can sense… serious pain harbored in her heart.”
: That’s kinda right, this dungeon really isn’t the best. When I went through to work on the update, I had a really hard time telling what was what because everything’s the same color.
: “Is that voice coming from the mural?”
: So okay, hear me out here. This dungeon talks a lot, but says very little that we don’t already know. Now, what if instead of telling us pretty much everything about Futaba before we even got here, the game did it through… environmental storytelling?
: Get rid of these insultingly easy slider puzzles and just have the murals along the walls as you go through. Make them almost impossible to miss. People would understand the story without you having to explain every single fucking thing to them.
: “Based on its contents, it sounded almost like a suicide note…”
: “Could that be what Futaba remembers of her mother’s suicide?”
: God you know what I’d love to see? This dungeon done by Satomi Tadashi. Have Futaba as a kind of anti-Maki where instead of making a perfect dream world, Futaba has made one in which she really is the worst person alive.
: Like, as much as I knocked him in Persona 1 and Innocent Sin, I’m sure he’d still have done a better job than whatever this shit is. Granted, I’m sure the entire party (Joker included) would just be blatant copies of idols he’s horny for, but whatever.
: “But that’s the shittiest thing to do to a kid if that’s really how it all went down.”
: I went back to the first area to farm a little bit. All shadows in Futaba’s palace (apart from Anubis and Thoth) can spawn as disaster shadows.
: Joker does almost a thousand damage to that Anzu. And that’s without Nuke Boost or Nuke Amp.
: And now we can break the game again.
Legendary bird of Native American origin. Said to cause thunder and stir the wind with the beating of its wings. Features heavily in art from Native tribes along the West coast and Great Plains area.
: I fused Lilim with a Lamia to make Thunderbird. Like Lilim and Anzu, Thunderbird is special.
: Now, here I forgot something very important. Any time you fuse a demon under a fusion alarm, their name turns gold. I had assumed this only guaranteed a fusion accident if you attempted to fuse them again (which I had no intention of doing) but as it turns out that also happens if you try to itemize them.
: On a side note, how do you execute a bird that drains electricity on an electric chair? That seems… kinda counterproductive.
: Fortunately, we get what I was looking for anyway. Thunderbird itemizes into an Elec Boost card, or an Elec Amp under an alarm. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
: We didn’t get a mutation on Mazionga (which would’ve been nice) but Thunderbird is one of the first Personas to learn a -dyne spell naturally. We now have our third gamebreaker… and with Electric Bloodline, he can cast all electric spells at half cost.
: I also grab Anubis while I’m at it. We need him because he is one of the components needed to fuse Lucifer. Have I mentioned that I am going to grind enough to fuse Lucifer? I am.
Egyptian god of the dead. Oversees mummification and weighs the souls of the dead against a feather.
: If he wasn’t a component for Lucifer, I wouldn’t have even bothered grabbing him. High SP costs combined with skills we already have on better Personas makes Anubis kind of useless.
: Anubis gave me a third fusion alarm, and I didn’t really have much to fuse (though in hindsight I probably should’ve gotten one of those all-boost accidents on a low-level Persona) so I made this instead by itemizing Arsene.
: “Huh? What is it talking about?”
: “I haven’t the slightest idea. It may be a hint of some kind.”
: Here’s a better shot of Andras.
: There’s a hole in the wall we can’t get through.
: The boulder knocked out that sarcophagus, so now we can go under the wall rather than over.
: This room has two rows of coffins in it.
: We also get a notification when we go to the top level that there’s a will seed, but there’s no obvious place for it to be.
: I’m going to skip a lot of the dialog here because it’s nothing dialog.
: “That may be a clue of some sort. Either way, we should search to see if anything has changed.”
: “Quite the impressive contraption. Why don’t we examine it closer?”
: On the other side is this button next to another stone slab. Have you figured out this insultingly easy puzzle yet?
: “It is the same color as the one from further in. There must be some meaning to all of this…”
: Pushing the button causes a security level increase and spawns an enemy, but does not put that enemy on alert… meaning you could also use this to grind.
: “Try touching it again, Joker. I see… so it’s possible to turn it back on as well. It looks like we should be able to turn the holograms on or off by accessing each control panel. Do you think this is related to that CODE from earlier?”
: We’ve got six holograms and a five-digit number. One of them is blue, and we have the message B01010. Naturally, this means turning off the first, third, and fifth holograms to the right of the blue one.
: While this cutscene plays out, I want to talk about my thoughts on this dungeon.
: My thoughts are this. This dungeon fucking sucks. It’s boring, samey, full of nothing puzzles and nothing dialog, and it’s hard to tell where I am in my screenshot folder because of it.
: They could have cut half of this place out and it still would’ve been too long. What was, for instance, the entire point of that first part where we had to escape the underground bit?
: Moreover, they went for some generic Ocarina of Time Spirit Temple shit instead of coming up with something vaguely original. And no, putting random binary on the brick textures is not originality.
: The thing is, we’ve been in this dungeon for over two hours at this point. Two hours of samey platforming bullshit in what looks like a 2008 game developer’s idea of “next gen” punctuated by battles we can win with a single button press.
: And the thing is, it only goes downhill from here. The next dungeon was totally reworked from the ground up because people fucking HATED it, and from what I understand it’s still boring.
: What gets me though is that this is shit they could have fixed in Royal. It’s a full-price re-release. Instead, we had Hashino shrug and utter the equivalent of “Well, can’t be helped.”
: “It’s broken… well, I guess it would be a little more precise to say we broke it.”
: “We can’t get through like this! What’re we gonna do!?”
: “Perhaps we could walk over the giant boulders? Let’s try it.”
: There’s two ways we can go. One way leads to the obvious progression route.
: The other way leads to this platform with another slab on it.
: “If this code is similar to the prior one, these would surely be hints for those buttons.”
: “To be honest, it somewhat reminds me of binary.”
: THE SMART GIRL!
: “That makes sense, given Futaba-chan’s hacker background. Well, let’s go see if anything’s changed.”
: “There should be some connection between that and the code that appeared on the stone slab.”
: NO FUCKING SHIT! It’s the same fucking puzzle we solved not even minutes ago!
: I swear, they were doing this to cover up for their godawful writing. Think about it. If they prevent you from actually thinking, you’re not going to notice that the game has no plot.
: Anyway, once we input the very obvious solution (turn off the coffin next to the red one, leave the next two on, and then turn the last two off) this door opens.
: Oh, right. In the base game, you had to do the second puzzle to get the boulder pathway to spawn. Otherwise, the puzzle was exactly the same.
: “I wonder what lies beyond it… I hope we’ll soon find out.”
: “By the way… what’s up with all the stuff here? Does it really represent Futaba-chan’s mental state?”
: “Hard to say, but… it does prove that she might not be as simple a target as we were hoping she’d be…”
: Going down the other hallway leads us right to this room.
: “This is the same mechanism as the one we saw before.”
: “Then we just gotta touch it and make something happen, yeah? C’mon, let’s try it out.”
: We’ve got ourselves another slider puzzle. This time, some of the pieces are rotated… and you can immediately tell which ones both by the picture but also by the fact that the game won’t let you rotate pieces that aren’t in the wrong position.
: “It seems the picture is complete.”
: “Is she… jumping in front of a car?”
: Nah, this is one of those Final Fantasy 6 things where she’s trying to suplex a car.
: “Could this be the moment when Futaba’s mother committed suicide? Hm? Another voice…”
: Here’s the thing. Imagine we didn’t know going in that Futaba’s mother had committed suicide. Imagine how effective this scene might’ve been. Instead, it’s just… not.
: “That’s horrible…”
: “So, did her desire to forget those memories cause her to repress them?”
: “We’re pretty far in now, right? This has to be past halfway.”
: This? This right here? This is practically Atlus ADMITTING this dungeon sucks. They have to fucking reassure you that it’s going to be over because for all you know there’s another six hours of this dumb bullshit.
: “Yeah, the Treasure is definitely close. You better be excited!”
: “Yeah, I guess you prolly wouldn’t be seein’ anything like this shit if we weren’t in a Palace.”
: “Seriously. This almost feels like a trip abroad or something.”
: “Hey, now’s not the time to be letting your guard down. I can sense lots of Shadows up ahead!”
: Yeah, we should proceed with caution. See? I could be a writer for this game.
: “It’s not a distance we’ll be able to jump either. What should we do?”
: We use the obvious hole in the wall that you can see on the minimap.
: We get into a fight with an Isis, but this time we get to see Makoto’s follow-up attack.
: The next area is a maze with some spike traps in it preventing you from getting the chest in the middle.
: The southern room has a button that disables the traps.
: The northern one has another tunnel.
: The button opens a couple of spawners and another button we have to backtrack to get. What is this shit, late '90s Rare?
: Joker remembers that Banjo and Kazooie are real and makes a note to ask them where he can find a big enough backpack to fit Yusuke inside.
: And this is why we have to backtrack.
: “This pathway of light is quite impressive. It seems will will be able to pass over it!”
: “It’s not gonna disappear while we’re crossing it, right? This is a little scary…”
: “It’d suck if we had to go through hell again ‘cause we walked up to her without thinkin’ first. So… what’s your call? You wanna keep goin’?”
: “Okay, but we should be careful.”
: “We almost did thanks to you! I mean, do you really wanna help us!? Make up your goddamn mind!”
: “Oh… not again! This is all because you picked on her, Skull!”
: Hashino must’ve been bored at this point, because we’re already doing boss re-fights.
: “This is my fault!?”
: Oh, right. I had mentioned in an earlier update about the buttrock cover of Last Surprise in Strikers, and this is as good a place as any to put it.
: Shoji Meguro had absolutely nothing to do with Strikers, and it shows.
: “Dammit, the hell’s up with her!?”
: “Can you just try to calm down? Nothing good will come of letting your temper flare up like that.”
: “She did say ‘there’s not much left’ though. The end of this Palace may be drawing close.”
: There’s another gem holder up ahead. You can actually see where I missed the gem on the map.
: I also grabbed an Andras, mostly because it surrendered to me.
Demon Marquis portrayed as an angel with the head of an owl. Controls anger and rage, and is basically a demonic hitman.
: "Hm, this sight brings a tear to my eye yet again!’
: “You’re so freakin’ weird, dude…”
: We’re now headed back to the first room, except this time on the second floor.
: The chest is a weapon for Joker that’s almost but not quite as good as the Great Thief Stick.
: To get the last will seed, we have to kick this board down to form a shortcut.
: This allows us to grapple up to a platform that was being blocked by the board, and gets us up to the last mini-boss.
: Meet Alilat. She is very close to being an ultimate Persona - she’s the second to last in the Empress arcana but is arguably better than the actual ultimate.
: I was trying to keep Thunderbird out to get it EXP, but I had to switch to Principality to exploit Alilat’s fire weakness.
: Note that even weakness hits will barely damage Alilat.
: After several turns of fire followed by All-Outs, the game gives me a Showtime to finish it. I took it since I wasn’t sure if there was enough HP left to get another All-Out for the extra cash.
: Fortunately, the money won’t matter much. You’ll see why in a bit.
: The Crystal of Wrath gives you Auto-Sukukaja (speed/accuracy up) when equipped. The improved version from Jose gives you a skill called Wings of Wisdom that heals most status effects off the entire party.
: Wings of Wisdom would be pretty useful for the boss… if we had time to go to Mementos, which we don’t.
: “I’d expect so. Joker, if you please.”
: “It may be a rather difficult puzzle for us to solve…”
: Same deal as the last one, only this time most of the pieces are rotated.
: Okay so like, I get that the weird bird thing in the top-right is supposed to be Wakaba’s monitor… but what’s the other bird thing in the top-left supposed to be?
: “Yes! We’re done!”
: “A child pulling on her mother’s clothes?”
: “The one clinging to her mother would be Futaba-chan, right?”
: How… it’s literally right in front of you! I get that you’re a fucking idiot but still!
: God dammit. I went to record the night time part of 7/31 and the boss fight and just found out none of my screenshots took.
: “Is that the maternity neurosis the voice from earlier mentioned?”
: “I thought it was pretty normal for a child to want to spend time with their parents, though…”
: “Yeah. Looks like Futaba was a pretty lonely kid growin’ up…”
: “So these incidents compounded, forcing her mother to suicide?”
: “Huh?”
: “Don’t say that!”
: “Futaba-chan!”
: “Why’d she get so quiet all of a sudden? What happened to that snarky personality?”
: “Could her heart perhaps be growing weaker?”
: “We have to hurry and save her!”
: So uh… here’s the thing. I kind of lost the recording for the last part of the dungeon, and there’s a couple of parts I couldn’t re-record due to saving over them after getting the RNG I needed.
: There’s one (very small, basically a glorified tutorial) cutscene I missed and I also got a Megido skill card off a Thoth off-screen.
: “Hm? This door…”
: “It looks familiar…”
: “Why ain’t it openin’?”
: “It must be her cognition that no one can enter it.”
: “So the Treasure’s through here?”
: “Indeed. However, you need my permission to open this door.”
: “Then open it for us.”
: “I cannot. You must have her invite you in.”
: “What the eff. Ain’t this your Palace?”
: “What’s she mean, Mona?”
: “The Shadow is Futaba, but not Futaba herself. In other words, we need the real Futaba’s permission.”
: You see, each person has two horses inside of them. One is horny. The other is horny. Unless you’re Joker, in which case both horses are gay instead. Judging by the outfit, I think we can assume Futaba’s shadow is the horny one.
: Speaking of horny, a couple of days ago, I saw a post on my Twitter feed about Jane Jensen, the writer for Gabriel Knight.
: “So, we need to have Futaba-chan open her room and let us in?”
: After Gabriel Knight 3, when Jane Jensen left Sierrra, she tried a couple of things. She made another game - it’s called Grey Matter and is more of a horror thing. She also wrote a couple of books that uh… didn’t do well.
: These days, she apparently writes trashy gay romance novels. Anyway, I got a copy of one of her books (not the trashy gay ones) for like $3 just to see what it was like.
: The book is called “Dante’s Equation” and even though I’m only about 200 pages in, as far as I can tell the plot is about a rabbi who discovers a magical Kabbalah-based radio wave that makes people so horny they vaporize.
: It has a lot of things that read like novelization of Grace’s segments in GK3 and a character who is Gabriel Knight if he wasn’t a vampire and/or werewolf hunter.
: “Right. She’s a serious shut-in.”
: “How will we convince her to allow us entry?”
: “Standing around here won’t help. We’ll just have to give it a try… that’s what she wants, after all.”
: “I think that we should do it too, even if it means we have to force ourselves in.”
: “Someone sure is stoked about this.”
: “We have no choice but to sneak in again.”
: “Joker, it’s your call when we do this. Make sure you think of some excuses just in case Boss catches us.”
: Unlike the other dungeons, we don’t need to take a full day to send the calling card. We’ll send the card and fight the boss on the same day.
: “We’re countin’ on you, Leader.”
: “On that note, is everyone clear on what needs doing?”
: “Oh, that reminds me. Gimme the calling card. The one Alibaba sent us.”
: “What are you going to do with it?”
: “We’re the Phantom Thieves, you know? We gotta announce this. If the Treasure’s there when we get the room open, givin’ this to her will let us take it right away. Queen, help me think of what to write.”
: “I suppose…”
: After this scene, I decided to grind a bit. As I mentioned earlier, I went and farmed Thoth for a Megido card and leveled everyone up to 36.
: I also hit a new record for the Greatest Weapon. Unfortunately, all my (lost) attempts at replicating this didn’t work out: we simply do too much damage to be able to loop negotiations.
: Oh right, that cutscene we missed. After you see the scene at the elevator, you’ll get pulled into the Velvet Room and given access to a new mechanic: the Gallows.
: The Gallows sacrifices a Persona to immediately level up another one and transfers a skill at random. I used it to level up Thunderbird to get Ziodyne… though on this run, I didn’t wind up keeping him.
Japanese god who little is known about. The real god was likely associated with medicine and ironworking, but the portrayal of him in the Megaten series comes from a forged historical document “discovered” in the 1970s. While he looks like a dogu, dogu actually have nothing to do with Arahabaki.
: We want Arahabaki for the boss, because it will allow Joker to win while doing absolutely nothing. I had to fuse Lilim and Thunderbird to get him, but it’s worth it.
: By the way, one more thing. BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE DUNGEON, ENSURE YOU HAVE AN EMPEROR PERSONA ON YOU. I didn’t the first time and that was a permafuck.
: “We finally secured our route to the Treasure! All we need to do now is send the calling card.”
: “Indeed… we have finished the prearrangements, and now we shall face the true test. But this is no time to panic, Joker. Let us ensure we succeed after having come so far.”
: “…There you have it. Sounds like a pretty important task got pushed on you. No point in thinking about it now though. We have to do it. Once you’ve made up your mind, just give the order as usual at the hideout.”
: We have a one-day gap between the palace and the boss, but it’s short and involves Yusuke.
: We now have a new ritual apart from gripping and sipping every Sunday. Every single time we return from a dungeon (or Mementos) we will be calling Kawakami for a massage. This is why Kawakami is so powerful.
: “I might have quit my job, but it’d be complicated if a teacher visited her student for personal reasons… I can’t get found out, you know. I hope you don’t mind me dressing like this when I come help you.”
: Joker: “Dammit Kawakami I thought you were over being horny, screw this I’m calling Yusuke.”
: “So? What do you think about the amount of force I’m using, Masterrr?”
: “Right? I’m a professional at this, after all. Huh. Your body is pretty fit. What the heck do you do to get it like this?”
: One hundred pushups a day, one hundred situps a day, and never being horny.
: I forgot that we actually could’ve gripped and sipped tonight, had we missed it earlier.
: We wind up with almost 810,000 yen… which is admittedly more than I had on the run that didn’t record.
: And now we can use our night slot to advance Chihaya’s confidant.
: “But… I suppose my divine power isn’t completely absolute, huh?”
: “It’s not that… I just need some time to accept that reality. You know, I’ve wondered in the past whether fate really can be changed… but I always concluded that it was something beyond our control.”
: So what you’re saying is that you’re one of those people who think that there’s nothing left to chance, a host of holy horrors direct your aimless dance, and you live on a planet of playthings that dance on the strings of powers you can’t perceive?
: “Almost like the laws of nature. Eternal… impossible to defy… and yet, there exist people like you who can ignore those laws and impose their own will upon the world…”
: “How can you become one of those people, Kurusu-san?”
: Joker: “Smoke some weed and listen to a Rush mixtape. Don’t even try telling me you don’t have weed, you absolutely have weed.”
: “Trust in myself, instead of my fortune telling? I’ve never thought of it that way before! This city keeps finding ways to subvert my expectations…”
: I don’t think she’s being sarcastic here, but it sure sounds like she is.
: “There was nobody like you back in my hometown in the country, Kurusu-san. It was a small, traditional town deep in the mountains, populated almost entirely by older people…”
: Joker: “Okay so what you’re telling me is that you lived in a town where everyone was in their post-horny stage of life. Where is this village again? I need to ask Yusuke his opinion of the mountains.”
: Chihaya: “Oh, you’ve got the wrong idea. They’re like goddamn animals.”
: “The youth there are forced to be strictly obedient to their elders as well. Not explicitly, of course… oh, and there’s a small shrine in the center of the village. There, I…”
: Got locked in the shrine as the result of daddy issues and then had the shrine lit on fire and just barely escaped with your life, traumatizing a group of kids for life?
: “…It doesn’t matter anymore. I left that place to come to this city. It means nothing to me now!”
: She saw one of those Gwyneth Paltrow catalogs with the $60 vagina stones… even though that was 2017.
: “That’s why I sell Holy Stones. I want to help those who suffer from inescapable fates similar to my own. But… now I wonder if they really do much of anything.”
: Of course they didn’t!
: “After all, you managed to change the destinies of my clients without one. It is truly possible to alter fate with nothing more than mere words, attitude, and passion?”
: “If that’s the case, I won’t be needing this. I’m going to confront fate head-on, with my own strength. Although… the chairman would be really mad if he found out.”
: “O-Oh, don’t worry about that! Just forget about it… unless you want to suffer my curse, that is. Anyway…! If fate can be changed… maybe even mine can be corrected, right? It didn’t work for me before, but perhaps this time…”
: “R-Right! I look forward to our continued exchange! At least, until I can manage to change my fate… oh, and I’ll be sure to put some extra effort into my fortune telling for you!”
: “Thank you for today, Kurusu-san. Good night.”
: “Thank you so much for today. To be honest, I’m still feeling a bit lost… but talking to you about everything is helping me feel a little better.”
: “Oh, nonsense! That couldn’t be further from the truth! Talking to you helped me realize what I should really be doing! I can only hope my fortune telling is enough to pay you back somehow…”
: Joker runs his hand across the top of the 800,000 yen sitting in his pocket. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”
: “Kurusu-san… I’ll be putting in a lot of work from now on. Even though I can’t even imagine changing my own fate… but I will figure out some way to make it happen. I hope I can count on you to help me through the process.”
: “Until next time!”
: “Yusuke’s coming here tomorrow, huh? He’s definitely making the most of his summer vacation… yawn I’m going to bed…”
: Uh-oh. Next time, we’ll have Joker’s boyfriend over again, fight a giant furry, and win that fight thanks in large part to doing absolutely nothing.
I got this pic last week from an artist (@Kabaddia1 on twitter) depicting what might happen if the Joker in P5 was also the Joker in Eternal Punishment. I’m sure it’d be more interesting than whatever passes for a plot in the actual game.
: This event might seem identical to the last one, but it’s actually unique.
: Joker immediately pulls out his phone and starts trying to find out how many demons he’d have to rob in order to pay for central air.
: We all know the second option is really “I am going to buy an air conditioner right now. This is going to be like that Sears commercial that came out before either of us was born, only gay.”
: We also know that Joker really, really wishes he was horny enough to pick the third option.
: “Hmm… I see. I didn’t think of that! Yes, I could go there to escape the heat and peruse some art books…”
: The rest of the scene continues the way the last one did, where we have the opportunity to ask Yusuke for coffee or a bath together. I think we all know what they actually do - go to Kichijoji and buy both that couch and an air conditioner. I mean, what else are they going to do with all that money? Buy Makoto new gear?
: I did actually stop in Kichijoji to sell all the sooty clothes we had. I actually wound up replacing the run that didn’t record with this one just because even after fusing Arahabaki and buying Lilim back, we still had significantly more money than the other run.
: Joker gives her a look that asks “Would you like me to use the air horn?”
: “No…”
: “Sorry, I’ve been turning down all such requests…”
: “Well, nothing’s been…”
: “…Thank you very much.”
: “… I really must apologize for being rude to you… it bothers me when people make such a big fuss over me…”
: “Considering that the priest is doing me a great favor by letting me play here… you see, he’s my shogi friend. And he’s very kind. He once told me that he wanted to become a professional player.”
: “…And he doesn’t laugh at my embarrassing habit when we play together.”
: Joker breathes a sigh of relief that Yusuke did not find his secret plans to mod a motorcycle so he could play 5Ds IRL.
: “So… I did the photoshoot. I’m embarrassed just thinking about it… did you see it? It was called ‘The Venus of Shogi’…”
: “Ever since I won the female shogi league, I’ve been getting a lot of attention. I just figured I could contribute to the shogi world… besides, my mother seems to be very happy…”
: “Whenever I win, she rejoices as if it were her own victory… so I want to live up to the expectations she has for me…”
: “…However, she’s been a bit overzealous lately. She set up the interview and the photoshoot. It’s as if she wants to be the manager of a celebrity.”
: “…A bit. But it’s fine, because it’s for my mother.”
: “Today, I’ll be showing you something very practical… it’s a tactic for using the reserved pawns you’ve taken from an opponent in a more effective way.”
: “Nevertheless, I apologize. You’re such a good listener, I feel at ease speaking with you… aside from the priest, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to about my mother…”
: Well yeah, it’s because he’s a silent protagonist.
: This is the return of an ability seen in P4 Golden where occasionally you’d have a non-active party member come in and do an automatic critical attack.
: “Now then, I will instruct you while we play. Are you ready…?”
: “Um… I ended up feeling much better after sharing my concerns with you… but this hardly seems fair. How can I teach you properly when I’m this distressed…?”
: “Oh… are you sure? You really are a strange individual… but thank you for the encouragement. If that is the case, I can only hope to repay you through my lessons.”
: “You make for a refreshing opponent. Somehow, the more we exchange, the more I feel my world expanding… teaching you is also a great learning experience for me, as it leads to a deeper understanding of myself.”
: Today, we’re doing the boss… and also see the game show its “seams” when we start stretching the limits of the boss’s scripting.
: “Well, I got the calling card, so lemme know what you decide.”
: “This is different from past cases. We’ll be handing the calling card directly to Futaba herself. Once we give it to her, we’ll head straight into her Palace. There won’t be any time for prep work in between, so make sure you’re ready beforehand.”
: One confirmation later…
: “Looks like it’s my turn to unlock the entrance. Forgive me, Chief.”
: “How will we convince Futaba to let us into her room though? Even Boss is forbidden entry.”
: “Yes, that is the best course of action.”
: “You know a method?”
: “I think it’s quite straightforward. Futaba doesn’t know what we’re doing inside her Palace, correct? Hence, if we tell her we’ve come to steal her heart, she’ll surely open the door and let us inside.”
: Does Ann have a spine? She’s constantly in these poses that look like they’d only work if her skeletal structure is made of jelly.
: “Futaba wants to have a change of heart. After all, she contacted us for that express purpose. That desire should lead her to open the door as well.”
: “You’re right… our feelings should get through if we just try and talk to her.”
: “All right, I believe in Futaba! C’mon, let’s get this done!”
: “Is this some kinda hallucination? It’s different from usual…”
: “Blaming myself for what?”
: “The truth…”
: Futaba’s voiceactress is really quite good - in Japanese, at least.
: “There’s no mistaking it. This is the same door as in the Palace.”
: “Hello, Futaba? You’re there, aren’t you? Please answer us.”
: “I doubt she’d answer…”
: “Alibaba, we know you’re there. It doesn’t matter if it’s through chat messaging. Just answer us.”
: “We can’t change your heart otherwise. Please let us in.”
: “The other you within your heart told us to have you open it. Deep down, you want to open this door, don’t you?”
: “Right. We’re trying to uphold our promise, but you’re the one resisting us.”
: “Ten seconds.”
: I went back this morning and finished the Ni no Kuni 2 LP since I got a notification that people were actually reading it. It’s kind of crazy how low-effort that was compared to this.
: “Fine. But if Boss comes home, we’ll kick down the door and enter if we must.”
: My favorite part of that LP was that back then, I thought that transcribing a couple dozen lines of dialog was hard work.
: “We need to change her cognition. Better to be completely safe than sorry.”
: “So she has to be the one to invite us in…”
: “Futaba, please open the door.”
: “All right, let’s go in…”
: Take a look behind Ann and you’ll find out where the pyramid comes from. At least it’s not a poster for Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In An Aeroplane Over The Sea” because I would hate to see what a dungeon based on that would look like.
: “Medical science, information technology, biology, psychology… these are all technical books…”
: “She keeps herself cooped up in a room like this all the time?”
: “Where’s Futaba?”
: “Where could she be hiding?”
: Joker: “It’s okay, Futaba! I know someone else who spent the majority of their time hiding in a closet!” And then when Yusuke doesn’t move and Joker’s like “Yusuke, that’s your cue.”
: “She’ll shut herself in to the bitter end, hm?”
: “Even if that door’s opened up, we’ll get stopped again inside. I bet a fence or something formed right in front of the Treasure now.”
: “Th-This makes no sense! Explain yourselves!”
: “Whoa, she talked…”
: Ryuji thinks Futaba is a magical talking closet.
: “We needed to change your cognition. Unless we do so, we can’t steal your heart.”
: “I highly doubt she would understand it even if we explained it to her…”
: “So basically, my cognition is being a hindrance, keeping you away from the core of my cognitive world?”
: As much as the Japanese VA for Futaba is amazing, the English one is very not. Futaba is 15 years old for most of Persona 5, and her English VA sounds like she’s pushing 60.
: “Huh? She understood it?”
: You just know the writers wanted to stick another plot recap here but got shot down.
: “Why do you know about that? Who are you?”
: “Why’d you call yourself Alibaba and make things more complicated? If you wanted help, you could’ve just asked for it.”
: “Huh? M-My bad. I didn’t catch that.”
: “…'Cause I was embarrassed.”
: “I think I get it. Asking someone for help isn’t that easy…”
: “Futaba, can you tell us more? How do you know about the cognitive world?”
: “…'Cause I knew about it.”
: “Oh… that reminds me. Boss was talking about ‘cognition’ or something before, right?”
: “You think this is related to how he was gettin’ grilled by that one lady?”
: Here’s a line that’s not great in either language, but makes a little more sense in Japanese than it does in English at least.
: In Japanese, the term “cognitive science” is spelled 認知科学 (pronounced “ninchi kagaku”) and the made-up term “cognitive psience” is spelled 認知訶学 (also pronounced “ninchi kagaku”). The difference is that there’s a different emphasis on the “kagaku” part to reflect the different spelling.
: In English, the line does not fucking work AT ALL. Both Makoto and Futaba’s VAs pronounce the words exactly the same way to the point where there’s almost no reasonable way that Futaba could know Makoto wasn’t spelling it right.
: “Well that certainly got her attention… it seems we’re on the right track.”
: “So, cognitive… psience? Futaba, what was your mother working on? Please tell us. What happened?”
: “She’s not answering.”
: “Yo, maybe save this for later. Seems she’s been through some serious shit so… you know?”
: “True… she did say things like ‘die’.”
: “Hold on.”
: “Whoa, you moron!”
: “Wasn’t her death an accident? What actually happened?”
: The fun part is we won’t get any answers about that until nearly the end of the game, so most of this dialog is pointless. I mean, that’s become par for the course.
: “Ann.”
: “We saw what your heart is like, but we still can’t figure anything out. The mother that Boss told us about is completely different from your cognition. We want to hear the truth from your mouth.”
: “…M-My mom… was… the… one who killed her… was… nngh…”
: “It’s possible that she can’t remember because her heart has become distorted.”
: “I’m so sorry, Futaba-chan. It’s just that… I went through a lot myself, and I… I’m sorry.”
: “…What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
: “C-C’mon, hurry it up!”
: “We did come to steal your heart, but it’s not really done right here at this moment… all you really had to do was open that closet door. I’m sorry we made you jump to conclusions. You don’t have to be like that…”
: “She went back in!”
: I do like this scene, I just wish it was less wordy.
: “Wh-what’s the meaning of this!? D-Did you guys trick me?”
: “No! Please listen! There’s a reason we had to do this!”
: “She’s aware of the cognitive world, but it seems she doesn’t understand how a change of heart occurs.”
: “Um, Futaba, how much do you know about the cognitive world?”
: “Yes, that’s right.”
: “How do you do it?”
: “We use a smartphone app.”
: And of course, what dialog scene in this game would be complete without pointless repetition?
: “An app?”
: “Yes. By entering the required information, we can go to the cognitive world.”
: “A name, a place, and a distortion - those three. So in this case, ‘Futaba Sakura,’ ‘Sojiro Sakura’s house,’ and-”
: “Futaba, you don’t happen to have this app, do you?”
: We already know she does!
: “This… I don’t.”
: “Thank goodness… okay then.”
: “Can you take me with you too?”
: I mean, assuming we’re working by Persona 4 rules as to what happens when you enter your own dungeon, she’d probably be fine.
: “I gotta agree. Just leave this to us.”
: “I’ll leave it to you then.”
: “Good. And you better not forget about our promise, all right?”
: I have some words to say about the calling card. It’s another plot fuckup that Atlus could EASILY have fixed but just… chose not to. Clearly they didn’t have the budget, given that Royal was only sold at full price.
: “Hm? A calling card?”
: “It’s the one you prepared. Read it.”
: “…I can’t read it. It’s too dark.”
: “You could just come out…”
: “…It’s embarrassing.”
: “What.”
: “I’ll make sure she reads it, so you guys go on ahead.”
: “Futaba, make sure you read it, okay?”
: “…Okay.”
: Gonna stop you right there, because it’s time for me to talk about how bad this entire thing is.
: This entire monologue was unchanged from the base game, and it’s wrong. The thing is, the writers themselves weren’t really sure what sin Futaba represented. The official explanation is that she represents wrath, as the achievement for completing her dungeon is “Pyramid of Wrath Collapses”.
: So how the fuck did this line about sloth get in there? To answer that, I went to @poop_doctor on twitter, who has been kind enough to provide me with details about the Japanese script. The answer is that it isn’t a localization failure as much as it is kind of a multi-layered failure burrito.
: That’s another thing I’d like to address. The LP of the base game incorrectly asserts that the plot fuckup doesn’t happen in the Japanese script. That’s simply not true.
: The truth of it is that the calling card graphic says “sloth” on it. The graphic is the same in both versions of the script. The difference is that Futaba’s Japanese VA doesn’t read the entire card: she reads the “Futaba Sakura has committed a great sin…” bit and then I think skips to the end of it.
: The localization team, knowing that English speakers couldn’t read the card itself, instead opted to have the English VA read the entire thing… not realizing (or not being able to fix) the fact that the graphic itself was wrong.
: The thing is, they could have easily fixed this shit (especially given that they were going for a launch at $60 price point) and instead we get Hashino and Royal’s writers just kinda shrugging and going “Guess it can’t be helped!”
: Aoi Yuki does that last line in this kind of ridiculous cat voice that pretty much perfectly encapsulates the horrible anime gremlin that Futaba is.
: “Futaba seemed totally up for gettin’ her heart stolen… what’s up with this?”
: “Hm… something about this place really is unusual. Either way, there’s only one thing for us to do now that we’ve sent the calling card!”
: “Hell yeah! No matter what we gotta face, we’re gonna take that Treasure for sure!”
: I mentioned it before, but you can make it all the way to the elevator from the start of the pyramid without fighting anything, so I do that.
: I wish they’d made this a viable option for most of the dungeons. Remove all the enemies and you just run through everything to get to the boss.
: “I mean after all the trouble we went through, she damn well better’ve read it!”
: “Well yeah, Futaba-chan opened the door herself.”
: “Anyway, the Treasure is up ahead! Let’s finish this!”
: “So, this is the place that represents Futaba’s room.”
: “Anyways, where’s the Treasure?”
: “I’m getting a strong signal from above us. The Treasure has definitely manifested.”
: “There’s no knowing what may lie ahead, so let’s be vigilant as we push toward the Treasure.”
: In the base game, this area had a bunch of enemies in it you had to plow through to get to the boss. Royal lets you skip it entirely via a grappling hook point at the beginning.
: Now, I could’ve skipped this, but I said “Nah fuck that” because I know something about the upcoming boss fight - apart from the fact that we’re going to break it so hard we can see the seams.
: The grappling hook point is off to the left, but I choose to jump down. I mean, we have to pay for that air conditioner somehow, right?
: We then get immediately ambushed by an Anubis and two Andras. The good news here is that because I don’t really need to “win” this fight…
: Two quick fire spells and a Makajam/Psio combo on Anubis and we get a Hold Up.
: This is a technique you can always use if there’s a stronger enemy with multiple weak ones. Just negotiate with the weaker enemies and the fight’s over.
: The only reason to even do this gauntlet anymore is for the single chest that Anubis was guarding, which has a snuff soul in it.
: Climbing stairs, getting into fights that I win in one turn or less.
: We get around 40,000 yen or so total, which should cover the air conditioner.
: “What may await us within?”
: “No matter what it is, we need to be ready for it!”
: “We’re coming to save you, Futaba-chan!”
: “Vocal input…? Fu- Futaba Sakura. …Sojiro Sakura’s house. And then… something about ‘distortion’… distortion… distortion…”
: “Hm?”
: The voices start picking up.
: “Not again…”
: “That’s right… I remember now. Back when they were here, I- …I messaged ‘tomb’ in the chat, and…”
: “The hell? This ain’t what I was imaginin’!”
: “Were you expecting a mountain of treasure or something of that sort?”
: “There IS that over there.”
: “That’s it?”
: “The Treasure must be inside.”
: “There’s something here…”
: “I got a bad feeling about this…”
: Wait a second, I thought this was Persona 5, not Resident Evil Village.
: Remember how the sphinx on the map didn’t have a head? This is why. I do, however, have several questions. If Futaba’s mother is a furry, why isn’t Futaba’s shadow also a furry? Is this one of those Ni no Kuni things where being a furry is something that’s bred out in two generations?
: “Ugh, look at it fly about! We can’t reach it like this! We’ve got no other option. Let’s take it down with our guns and skills!”
: This boss fight is the only one that hasn’t really changed from the base game. The only difference is that in the base game, the mom-sphinx took 5x damage from physical attacks while being neutral to everything else. In Royal, the 5x damage multiplier is extended to gun attacks as well.
: You definitely don’t want to bring Ryuji for this fight though, because one of the sphinx’s stronger attacks is wind-element and can actually instakill him on higher difficulties.
: Gun attacks will never miss as far as I can tell. Theoretically, we could’ve fused a Persona with Triple Down (a physical skill that hits for gun damage) but there’s not really much of a point because of how scripted this fight is.
: The mom-sphinx has two attacks in this phase: slam, which is a single-target physical attack…
: And Wing Blast, which is a wind-element skill that hits the entire party and has a good chance of inflicting Dizzy. On Merciless, she will Technical anyone who isn’t immediately cured for a guaranteed instant kill.
: The first thing you want to do is immediately unload on her with guns. Fire every single bullet you have. Hold nothing back.
: After two attacks, the mom-sphinx will use Rapid Ascent and fly off screen. If this was the base game, or the party was any lower level, I would have had Joker heal everyone instead of shooting.
: You have exactly one turn before the boss uses Sphinx Dive. You want to set everyone to guard… except Joker, in this case. Why, you ask? Because he has Arahabaki.
: This attack does a FUCKLOAD of damage, and because he’s not guarding, Joker reflects back the full amount times five. This means he returns over 2,000 damage without doing anything at all.
: Now, I’d like you to pay careful attention to how much HP the boss has right now. I’d say it’s between 45 and 49 percent. The developers didn’t quite anticipate that you would have Arahabaki for this fight.
: Does it matter? We could win this fight by doing absolutely nothing and letting the boss reflect damage onto itself!
: I really should’ve tested this on Merciless, because on Merciless weakness hits do more damage. I actually turned the difficulty up for a bit while grinding, and what happened was that Joker was hitting enemies for several times their max HP.
: “This is the suicide note… the men in black suits read it right after Mom died…”
: “This… this is… when Mom jumped in front of that car…”
: “No…”
: “…It’s me complaining. Mom scolded me for bothering her…”
: So wait, what happened to shadows being homicidal and trying to get you to say the magic words to allow them to kill you?
: “I knew it. It was me who killed Mom. I was a bad daughter… I weighed her down, and she hated me for it… it’s just like I remember…”
: “Huh?”
: “Just a little before Mom died… I whined about wanting to go on a family trip… but she scolded me and said no.”
: "Mom said… ‘I’m too busy right now. I need to finish my cognitive research as soon as possible.’ "
: “I threw a tantrum. Told her she thought her research was more important than I was. That’s when she scolded me…”
: This entire exchange is far too reminiscent of YIIK and that scene with the fucking panda. This is also where Futaba’s character arc starts to take a shit.
: "… Did she say…? ‘My research is almost over. Once it’s finished, we can go wherever you like. I’m sorry I’ve left you alone for so long, Futaba. Please try to understand though. This research is really important. I need to complete it, even if it costs me my life.’ "
: “She didn’t…?”
: So either she knew the entire time that her mother didn’t kill herself because of her, or she was too dumb to realize it? Either way, it feels like Futaba is 8 instead of 15.
: “Which is true?”
: “Huh…? It’s calling me…?”
: Wait, what? By this point it should already by dead from having repeatedly tried to divebomb Joker.
: “You came into your own cognitive world!?”
: She acts like that didn’t happen in Persona 1 or Persona 4.
: “Mm-hm…”
: “The person themselves coming into their own Palace? If that happens…”
: “That’s…”
: “No…”
: “It’s my fault… it’s my fault that Mom…”
: “Wait, is that monster her mother!?”
: “Futaba’s desires and guilt must’ve distorted her cognition of her. The wish that her mother was alive again is mixed in as well, along with those eerie jeers…”
: “What does she mean by that?”
: “Could she be talking about cognitive psience?”
: “Nobody cares about me…”
: Wow, I didn’t know that Vincent Adultman was ever seen outside of his trenchcoat. He looks a lot less like three kids standing on each other’s shoulders than he usually does.
: “Futaba-chan, look! There’s no way that monster is your mother! It’s just an illusion you created!”
: Joker: “Wait, are we sure of that? Have you checked to make sure she’s not a furry in some kind of elaborate suit?”
: “B-But…”
: “She never abused you, did she!? Boss told us! He said she did her best to raise you alone!”
: “Isn’t this a false memory that’s been imprinted upon you?”
: “A false memory? Aagh…”
: “M-Mom… I-I…”
: I think the problem here is that they made Futaba a little too much like Maki.
: “…Because of the note.”
: “All of her complaints… about me.”
: Futaba strikes me as the kind of person who listens to drive-time radio shows and believes all the dumb shit they say, which kind of ruins the piercing “Nai!” that Aoi Yuki does here.
: “She scolded me whenever I had tantrums, but she cared for me!”
: “A total lie!”
: “It’s because I couldn’t face myself, or Mom’s death… even then, why did they have to yell at me like that!?”
: I also feel like maybe having a giant story cutscene in the middle of a boss fight wasn’t the best decision. At least they stopped the fight to do it - Strikers has plot that happens during fights and is shown in the top-right corner when you’re trying to not die.
: “Futaba-chan!?”
: “…That’s right. I knew, but I…”
: Kinda bold of them to mention Your Turn To Die, which as I understand it is a pretty okay freeware Danganronpa clone.
: “I won’t let those distorted lies deceive me anymore… and I won’t be led astray by other’s voices either… I’m going to trust my own eyes and my own heart to distinguish the truth from the lies.”
: “There’s no way you’re my mom! You’re just a fake created by those horrid adults! I’ll… I’ll never…”
: Meet Futaba’s Persona. I probably should log it, but it’s like Rise’s Persona in 4 in that it’s not an actual Persona. Its name is Necronomicon - the book of the dead from the Cthulhu mythos.
: Yusuke turns his head. “Joker… is this what happens to horny people who get a Persona?”
: It took me up until this scene to understand how you say that phrase in Japanese. You hear the demons say it after a successful negotiation, but it’s “Nanji wa ware, ware wa nanji.”
: I don’t know how I never caught on to that before.
: Futaba has been sent to the Horny Void, where all horny people are destined to end up.
: Joker now realizes how the Phantom Thief outfits work. They’re like that Jane Jensen novel in that they’re entirely reflective of how horny you are.
: Speaking of which, I’m almost finished with it and it’s kind of like Gabriel Knight 3 in that it turns into an isekai before isekai blew up.
: If you look, you might notice that we’ve been healed to full. The party’s gun ammo has also been restored, hence why it’s a good idea to unload on the boss right away… and why it didn’t matter if we blew through some SP on the way up.
: Absolutely nothing! We can win this fight by not doing anything!
: This is the one major change to the sphinx fight. In the base game, you went right into a phase we’ll see in a minute. Instead…
: Now, I’d like to draw your attention to something. Remember where the boss’s health bar was before? If not, I’ll do a quick paste of it.
: The game did not expect that we’d be reflecting fuckloads of damage back at the boss, and so the boss just gained a bunch of HP back. Worse, Futaba actually did less damage with her shield than Joker would have if she’d just let it hit him. Basically, we’re now seeing the “seams” of the scripting.
: I’m trying to picture a scene where Joker is pleading with the party: “No! Run away! It’s more efficient if I just sit here and reflect the hits! We don’t even have to use SP, I can just sit here!”
: Joker: “You mean we’re going to start extorting her for money? Or that you’re going to unlock the party’s Personas so I can change them out for ones that reflect physical?”
: Joker: “God dammit.”
: In the base game, you go right to the ballista instead of doing the shield part. That would have been more efficient (well, not really due to the scripting) because Arahabaki was the same level and had the same abilities in the base game.
: The ballista takes two turns to fire, and you’re required to fire it twice. We’ll send Yusuke because he’s the only one who believes Joker when Joker says he’d be better off by himself.
: I make a minor tactical error here in that I use Ziodyne instead of immediately unloading Joker’s gun again.
: 216 damage is actually really good given that Makoto is doing less than 100 with Freila.
: Ann and Makoto unload their guns, which quickly piles on damage.
: This part is the other difference from the base game fight. The sphinx will ask you two questions - answer both correctly and Futaba will shield you from her next attack. Technically, we don’t want this (as Joker’s reflect does more damage) but I do it anyway.
: “Mom is gone. No matter how much I wish for her to be with me, it’ll never come true. That’s why I’ll live in the real world, even if she’s not there with me anymore! And I’m gonna live my life as free and happy as I can!”
: That line will be important much later on.
: Now, I understand why they did this. There is a reason beyond simply making the fight easier. However, it feels kinda dumb.
: “Listen, my mom is so precious to me, and I still love her a ton… but, you’re not her! And I’ll never live a life where everything gets decided by someone else!”
: Sphinx Swipe is another attack that hits the entire party for physical damage, and would be the perfect opportunity for Joker to reflect some damage back.
: In the meantime, we keep hitting the sphinx with spells… but notice how her HP didn’t decrease at all between Joker hitting her and Ann hitting her. That’s the scripting.
: Still not moving.
: The thing is, the shield takes a lot out of the fight. I don’t have to worry about Ann and Makoto because I know they won’t be divebombed again.
: “Shut up! You’re not my mom! You’re just a monster born from my own weakness… everyone keep attacking it! Don’t let up!”
: Translation: Free All-Out.
: That HP bar really isn’t moving, huh? The thing is, we’re not even that overlevelled anymore - it’s just that things like the shield and Arahabaki make it really obvious that the fight is scripted.
: After the All-Out attack, the HP bar starts moving again, but the damage is kind of already done.
: The thing is, the developers should’ve anticipated this better. I’ve seen HP walls on bosses done properly - Kulve Taroth in Monster Hunter World is a great example, where I don’t think people knew the walls were even there until it came out on PC and was discovered in a datamine. I certainly didn’t know until I watched a video on it.
: But the problem is that once you know where the seams are, it takes a lot of uncertainty out of the fight. That’s one of the reasons I liked Earthbound a lot - it was a game that did a really good job of hiding them.
: Once the ballista hits, you have a few turns to just beat on the boss. Since it’s weak to physical and there’s not much of a point to using skills because of the HP walls, I just opted to leave the game on Rush mode.
: I don’t know why the auto-battle system underwent such a regression between the PSP versions of Persona 1 and Persona 2 and now, but it might have something to do with Japanese players not liking the remade combat system in those games. I know that people working on the Eternal Punishment PSP translation have said they don’t consider the combat in the PSP version to be as good as the PS1 original.
: In all the post-EP Persona games, auto-battle gets renamed to “Rush” and has everyone do a basic physical attack on their turn.
: When the boss gets back up, it uses a move that attempts to hit everyone with Despair. Despair drains SP for two turns and then is an instant kill on the third turn.
: This was how you beat the Reaper easily in the base game: the Reaper could be hit with Despair and would die provided you could last three turns in battle.
: Fortunately, Joker simply Detoxes his way out of it. Harisen Recovery could also work if we had more than one person with it - and on the reset-heavy route, we would. Unfortunately, I don’t believe Harisen Recovery works if the person who has it is under a status effect themselves.
: Fortunately, we have a couple of these for just this kind of situation.
: The boss also chooses to attack Joker, reflecting some 400 damage back.
: We then have to send Ann to do the ballista. I think the way it worked in the base game was that the ballista took an extra turn to fire if you sent the same person twice, though I’m not sure that’s still the case in Royal.
: That reflect brought us to another HP wall, so now we just have to sit and wait.
: “That’s a lie. Mom told me herself! She said no matter what, she could keep working so hard because of me… the one who decided my existence was a burden on her - is myself! No one else!”
: This fight also reminds me of Kulve Taroth because of how bad the G-rank “Arch Tempered” version was. People determined very quickly that the best way to fight it (because of how the mechanics worked) was to basically join a lobby for it, ignore it for 5 minutes so it’d fuck off, and then do the fight over (because it got easier as the progress bar went up).
: “No! With them, even the impossible can be made possible!”
: The fight continues for a bit, and then the ballista goes off again.
: At this point, the fight’s over. I don’t think the sphinx will get back up.
: One last gunshot.
: If nothing else, you can tell the HP wall is there because the final shot will always do 113 damage, even in the base game.
: “Damn, you’re freakin’ incredible!”
: So here’s a fun fact that’ll come up… soon-ish. In the English translation, Futaba’s codename is “Oracle”. It’s not the same in Japanese. Why, you ask?
: In Japanese, her codename is “Navi” - it’s a commonly-used abbreviation for “navigator”. I’m pretty sure they changed it specifically to avoid her being connotated with Na’vi from Ocarina of Time (whose name is a play on the same word).
: Futaba is the only party member to have a different codename between the US and Japanese versions.
: “Huh…?”
: God dammit! This is just Ni no Kuni 2 all over again! And I just finished that LP (again) this week! Fuck!
: “I’m sorry for being so selfish. Mom…”
: “But I finally got to see you again…”
: “Um, I… I love you, Mom…”
: Futaba: “I’m going to build a kingdom where everyone can live happily ever after, even if I have to displace and murder thousands to do it!”
: “Where are you going?”
: “Home. I know how to use the Nav now.”
: “Huh? Oh… right.”
: “She left…”
: “That girl marches to the beat of her own drum, doesn’t she?”
: “Like you’re one to talk.”
: “But if we have her on our side… wait, what about her Treasure!?”
: “Oh yeah! We almost forgot.”
: “What’s goin’ on!? Wasn’t it supposed to be here!?”
: “Futaba herself was the Treasure! And she’s gone, so of course it’s empty!”
: Joker tells Yusuke to get in the box, because the real treasure was Yusuke.
: “Shoot… this is bad!”
: “What’s the matter?”
: “Not only did the real person come into her own Palace, she awakened to a Person while she was here! This place could collapse any second now!”
: “We’ve accomplished our mission if her Palace is crumbling. We should hurry back to reality.”
: “That would be wise.”
: Hold the fuck up. Did Morgana just… goatse the entire party? What dipshit animator thought this was a good idea?
: I think we all know this scene is wrong and Yusuke is actually holding Joker.
: “Hey… you guys still alive?”
: “I thought I was gonne die in - HEY! Will you let go already!?”
: “N-not again…”
: “What was that sound? …Hm? What’re you guys doing out here?”
: “Oh, ummm…”
: “That reminds me, where’s Futaba?”
: “What about Futaba?”
: “Oh, um…”
: “Ah, yes! We came all this way, so how about we enjoy some coffee?”
: “Oh! That’s a great idea!”
: “That’s fine, but…”
: “I’m not thirsty though.”
: Makoto walks over and punches him in the side, because she’s the worst character in this game.
: “Oh, I almost forgot! I have some business to take care of, so you guys go ahead.”
: “O-okay, gotcha!”
: “Please…”
: “Could this be our fault? Is it because we defeated her monstrous mother?”
: “No, that was nothing more than a cognitive being created in her mind. Destroying it wouldn’t cause memory loss or put a physical burden on her…”
: “What should we do?”
: “Hey, don’t you know a doctor?”
: “Morgana, I don’t even think Dr. Femdom is a real doctor and besides, my air horns aren’t fully charged.”
: “You do? Can you contact them?”
: “How much will it be?”
: “…That was a joke.”
: “So, um… how is her condition?”
: “Her pulse, breathing, temperature, and blood pressure are all normal. No ocular abnormalities either. I’m not sure why, but it seems this girl is in some kind of light stupor.”
: “Furthermore, she lacks muscle for her age. I doubt she has much stamina either.”
: The real question is how much we’d have to pay her to femdom Futaba back to consciousness.
: “I see. The rebound from her awakening was too strong.”
: “There may have been too many abnormal circumstances…”
: “We simply cannot keep quiet about this. We should let Boss know.”
: “Wouldn’t he figure out our identities?”
: “That’s not gonna solve anything. Letting him know is really the only option we have.”
: “I guess it can’t be helped now… just keep the circumstances that led up to this a secret, okay?”
: “…”
: “…”
: “Oh dear…”
: “…”
: “Um… about Futaba…”
: “Hm? Why do you guys look so down?”
: “Futaba-chan’s condition…”
: “What, this? It happens every so often.”
: “Huh?”
: I love how he’s just “Oh, Futaba? She just kinda goes comatose for no particular reason sometimes.”
: “What?”
: “She stays like this for a few days whenever this happens. I’ll make sure she gets plenty of rest. Here, keep an eye on her. I’m gonna go close the store.”
: Translation: Futaba is going to be in a coma until the end of her plot arc.
: “Yeah, I’m feelin’ pretty frustrated…”
: “I’m glad she’s okay… but what are we gonna do about Medjed?”
: “She’s up!”
: “Medjed… tired. Gonna sleep for a bit.”
: “She feel asleep again!?”
: “Futaba-chan! For a bit? How much is she planning on sleeping? We probably shouldn’t wake her up either…”
: “What to do…”
: “It’s too late for us to find another hacker…”
: “All we can do is wait for her to wake up…”
: This update got posted early due to me playing Monster Hunter in the background and forgetting that AmaRecTV’s “get out of fullscreen” shortcut is the same one for “post the update” on this site, and I didn’t record the night segment, so we’ll just do that next time.
: 08/02 marks the last time we will see actual gameplay until 09/19, when we next go to Mementos. That means the next… month and a half… will be nothing but confidant events and stat raising.
I think you accidentally posted the next update early. But it ends on a pretty good cliffhanger. 
Yeah, I had the site open in the background while I was playing Monster Hunter.
I’m not sure why they didn’t have this dungeon as sloth to begin with if they were going for a seven deadly sins thing. I guess they meant it as Futaba’s self-loathing is wrath pointed at herself? But her acceptance of the story pushed on her by others even as it’s harming her registers as more of a sloth thing to me. Or Futaba trying to put the work of saving herself off onto the Phantom Thieves instead of confronting herself. I’m thinking this sins thing was not well thought out.
Also it seems like a rip that John Persona and the other early party members just get big ghost people as Personas and then Makoto gets the popercycle and Futaba gets to ride in a UFO that’s a book. What’re the next two party members going to get? A Gundam and a Battlestar?
Thing is, flying is pretty much all Futaba’s Persona does. It has stats which aren’t used for anything as far as anyone knows. She can equip armor and weapons that don’t do anything (they do in Strikers) and really she’s just there to take over Morgana’s job.
The rest of the party members (including the new one in Strikers) all have humanoid Personas.
Wow, being a mouse is even worse than being a fly (SMT3) or a bat (DDS). Who knew?
No you don’t.
Looking at Anubis’ skill table, why does it learn Resist Bless when it already nulls Bless? Just to pass it on?
ngl it sounds just as bad as the original. Maybe even not quite as bad. Actually now that I’ve listened to a few times I even kind of like it.
Shoji Meguro should Meguless imo
JOKER: Well, based on my understanding of the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche…first the world needs to end and then Satan needs to drop a worm into your eyeball.
Yes, Aoi Yuuki is very good.
Joker frantically tries to find the Withdraw command in the menu, realizes he isn’t playing SMT.
Sojiro knows that sometimes life is put on standby until a predetermined number of days have passed. Which I can conclude means he used to be a Persona-user.
Yeah, that’s pretty much why. A lot of the things he can fuse into are weak to Bless, but at the same time this makes him kind of sub-par fusion fuel because anything that can use Resist Bless can’t learn any of the Bless-element spells he has.
: After the boss fight, we immediately call Kawakami.
: Oh no, she’s found self-help books.
: “I even have a book about the secret to being a good listener! It was written by a hostess from a club in Ginza. Just picking out which books to bring took me half a day. I have tons more back home though!”
: “I’ve started using these as reference materials for the advice I give to my clients. This way, I can suggest new alternatives instead of leaving them resigned to their fates.”
: “Of course. After all, I need to be able to advise my clients on their future selves! Anyway, what I really want to tell you is that I’ve arrived at a new fortune telling philosophy.”
: “Those with strong convictions can, in fact, change fate. O-oh, and as for the people I sold Holy Stones to… I’ve started reading their fortunes free of charge. I’d like to return the money they gave me too, but um…”
: Does this mean she’s going to give us all that money back we spent on luck readings? No.
: “W-Well, um…”
: “Yokoda-san!?”
: “U-Um, what are you doing here?”
: “Th-that’s my apprentice! I haven’t actually introduced him to the chairman yet…”
: “Y-Yes! He’s been a wonderful help!”
: “Thank you for stopping by!”
: “…I’m sorry you had to see that…”
: “That’s, well… a nickname of sorts. A-Anyway! It’s a private matter, Kurusu-san. Nothing you should concern yourself with.”
: “W-Wait, are you perhaps… worried about me? Oh, I’m so touched! Honestly! My luck really improves when you’re around, Kurusu-san! I know! In exchange for that, I’ll predict your luck whenever you want!”
: All of Chihaya’s abilities are good, and this one is one of the best. Affinity Reading costs 5,000 yen and gives you one point to any confidant you currently have… and TWO points if you have a matching Persona. This means you can potentially turn a non-rankup event into a rankup event or avoid a permafuck if you get a wrong answer because the guide you’re using is a half-plagiarized piece of shit that didn’t properly translate some of the dialog options.
: We’ll be using this a few times, mostly to avoid having to waste a night without ranking up.
: This is a direct hint on what we’ll have to do - there is a part-time job at the bar in Shinjuku and we’ll need to do it once to get this done.
: We then, regretfully, have to do another Makoto event. The good news is these will pause for a bit because after this rank, we need Charm at rank five.
: “Let’s get a drink before we talk. Oh, and we can take the back entrance into the school.”
: Why is she even here? It’s summer break!
: “I guess he, um… hit on her one day after her shift, and that was that. Since then, he’s the only thing she’ll talk about. She even sent me a picture of their date at Destinyland.”
: Was Pascal the Dog there?
: I’d make an Among Us joke, but I think Among Us becoming the next big thing and then dying in the span of like three months was enough of a joke.
: “…You think so as well? For now it seems he hasn’t forced her to spend any money at his club, but I’m still nervous… beyond that, he calls her his ‘princess’ and constantly tells her how special she is. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
: Joker immediately begins calling Makoto “princess” at every possible opportunity in hopes that she fucks off.
: "But Eiko refuses to listen to me. She said the idea that all hosts are bad people is outdated… she even said she was shocked to be getting advice from someoe who would ‘totally flunk a test about love.’ "
: Wait a second, wasn’t this a Yakuza substory? Hashino, you unoriginal fuck.
: “S-sorry about that… I’m probably just being biased towards him. I mean, I don’t have any proof that he’s untrustworthy… but that’s why I want to meet him and find out for myself what kind of person he really is.”
: Joker: “No. Not even if you paid me.”
: “It’s honestly okay? You’re so reliable, Akira-kun. I think if I have a boyfriend, Eiko might be more inclined to listen to me. To tell you the truth… I actually already made plans with her and her boyfriend for a double date.”
: “S-sorry. But it’s just going to be at a diner. Nothing particularly fancy, I promise.”
: This next part is going to sound like I missed a screenshot. I didn’t. Joker nods and then Makoto continues.
: “Thank you! You’re a tremendous help. I’m so glad you agreed to this. I don’t know who else I’d have asked if you had said no…”
: “Eiko… I hope she’s not getting herself wrapped up in anything dangerous. But just in case, I’ll try looking for some info on that host.”
: “Do you think Eiko’s really okay? I hope I’m just being paranoid about her boyfriend… but if it turns out he really is toying with Eiko… what should we do?”
: It’s a shame the first answer isn’t the right one.
: “You’re right. We’re friends now, so I’m sure she’ll understand if I can just have an honest talk with her! Phew… I keep thinking in circles here. I need to stop dwelling on the negative.”
: “Let’s see who this host is behind his smile. For Eiko’s sake. Okay, I’ll call you again later.”
: Sick burn from Yusuke. He really is the best party member.
: “I understand why you guys feel nervous, but we’ll just have to wait for now.”
: We have a crossword… and admittedly, I could’ve gone and gotten a luck reading first. This is where the guide I’m using starts going to shit - the guide claims it’s raining (which would prevent us from getting a reading) but it’s not.
: I had to shuffle around Personas to get a Hanged so I could do this confidant. This is going to be a problem for the next couple of weeks, at least until we max out Ann and Ryuji.
: “I’m gonna meet with a guy at the diner after this. I need you to sit close-by. When I give you the signal, call me. The signal is when I cough, got it? C’mon, let’s head over there.”
: “Hey, don’t knock this place. It’s pretty decent, and cheap too.”
: If you couldn’t already tell, Iwai is an ex-yakuza. He shares more than one similarity plot-wise with Kazuma Kiryu, but he’s one of the confidants in this game I don’t outright hate.
: “You don’t need to exaggerate.”
: “Oh, right. How’s Tsuda-san doin’?”
: “Oh, nothing. Just saw him 'round the other day.”
: “I mean, we were both young… I just figured it’s about time we bury the hatchet. I can’t just go up n’ talk to him though…”
: The yakuza code of honor, which prohibits anyone from talking to anyone else without pretending they’re in one of those medieval intrigue novels.
: “No, you fool. I just wanna end up in the same place at the same time. It’s gotta look like a coincidence.”
: I’m now imagining a yakuza-style dating app where it just gives you a random place to wander around and if you happen to meet someone, well…
: “Yeah, we’re redevelopin’ it into a big obstacle course so this guy can chase Eddie Murphy around it to increase his stamina in those chase scenes that pretty much stop showin’ up by the point the training becomes available.”
: “Shibaura… cough cough”
: The second choice isn’t wrong, but it boots you into the first one.
: “Nah, it’s just a cold. Hello? Yeah, how’s it goin? What? Your order’s all wrong? My bad, I’ll get back and take care of that straight away.”
: “Sorry, I gotta run. Work shit. Let’s talk some other time, yeah?”
: “Masa’s still on the phone, right? Just say quiet so I can hear what he’s sayin’.”
: “A deal? …Sounds like there’s some weird stuff goin’ down.”
: “Y’know I was actin’, right? …At any rate, I honestly wasn’t expectin’ too much outta you. But it looks like you’re gonna actually be some use to me. I’ll be countin’ on you, kid.”
: “Good work today. Order yourself somethin’ nice as a reward. Oh, and bring me the receipt so I can pay you back for it. Well, later.”
: The answer is “We’ve been assaulting people for cash”. Mishima is going to keep spamming us with requests because I believe the area of Mementos that covers Kaneshiro’s dungeon just opened.
: Today, we’re hanging out with Yusuke and our new air conditioner (just offscreen).
: “Photos can’t convey all the real life majesty of art. There’s also scale: art can be titanic in size. Hm… I wish to go to Paris. Akira… will you join me?”
: Joker actually does all three answers at once, except it’s “Let’s go. Just the two of us. Pack your bags, I’ll buy the tickets.”
: “Great! We shall have to save money for travel, then. It would be cheaper if we go there by foot, but it is simply too far… nevertheless, that would be an enjoyable journey.”
: Five points to Charm.
: Before we go on to visit Caroline and Justine, there’s a TV quiz we can do for knowledge points. I actually did the rest of the update, completely forgot about this part (even though I had done it), thought I’d permafucked, and then realized that no, I had done it the entire time.
: Thing is, barring a fuckup so bad it’d have to be intentional, we’re past the point where we can easily permafuck.
: We’re actually several events behind with Caroline and Justine, but we will be seeing all of them. We actually kinda need to, because finishing their confidant is a pain in the ass without the DLC.
: The final rank of their confidant requires that you fuse a Seth with High Counter. The DLC provides a Persona you can fuse directly into Seth that starts with that move, so it’s super easy to do.
: If you don’t have the DLC, you have two options: either waste a fusion alarm fusing Ose and itemizing him into High Counter (we will be doing this) or get it from these optional events.
: “Listen closely: the place we wish to evaluate for your rehabilitation is… where one offers up faith and words of devotion.”
: “Every day, lost sheep flock there to pray. There are even cases where individuals will confess to crimes.”
: “Confessing one’s crimes due to a fear of divine punishment… this has a familiar ring to our own Inmate’s rehabilitation. Does such a location sound familiar to you?”
: “Well? If you know where it is, then escort us there immediately!”
: “So, what’ll it be?”
: “Oh, so it’s called a church? Let’s witness this so-called faith that humans offer with our own two eyes.”
: “Lead us there, Inmate. Now.”
: “The peaceful atmosphere here is the antithesis of a prison cell…”
: “Hmm? Is that man standing there one of the gods?”
: “Yeah, you may be right. At least, I can’t sense any exceptional abilities from him.”
: It’s because the Messians are cannon fodder.
: “If that is the case, then perhaps he’s some sort of servant to the gods. What is that over there… a smaller room?”
: “I know! It’s an ‘iron maiden’ for reforming criminals, right? Whoever goes inside and fails rehabilitation gets skewered!”
: Confession booths are a natural occurrence that usually grow under cherry trees and are where anime teenagers go to confess their love.
: “Confession… booth? You mean, THIS tiny box is where the crimes are confessed?”
: This line shows that Hashino clearly has never been to a church before. I did the whole church thing when I was a kid, and they start doing confessions really young. Most of the articles I found on it said that the modern Catholic church starts doing it around 7 years old, which is pretty much what I remember.
: As far as I know, that’s a pretty standard thing in Catholic churches and isn’t just limited to the United States.
: “Which of us? Do you intend to split us up and pick us off one by one?”
: “Hmph, no such luck. We’re both going in.”
: “…You what? Listen to people’s concerns? This isn’t a form of rehabilitation? …Regardless, such talk is cheap, but pays quite well.”
: “We shall undertake this confession and ascertain the truth for ourselves.”
: “Hmmmm, what to confess… it’s probably unkind to kick the Inmate, but it’s part of my duties as warden, so that can’t be held against me…”
: What she’s referring to is this animation that plays if you enter the Velvet Room from the real world, where Justine opens the door and Caroline kicks Joker in the back to force him inside.
: “This is none of your business. We’re speaking to the gods right now.”
: I wonder what denomination the Velvet Room workers are. I mean, can you really find religion when your entire job is fusing clones of random gods for teenage RPG protagonists?
: “Recently, I’ve been shifting my more mundane bookkeeping responsibilities onto Caroline…”
: “You WHAT!? I knew my workload was feeling larger for some reason!”
: Wait, what. What bookkeeping? Who do Caroline and Justine pay taxes to? Can the IRS (or rather, whatever Japan’s taxation agency is) even reach the Velvet Room?
: “But… she made so many mistakes in her work that I regret not doing it myself…”
: Joker enters the Velvet Room the next time and Caroline and Justine are in the cells next to his for tax fraud.
: “Of COURSE I’d make mistakes when I have nearly twice the work!”
: I didn’t know what menchi katsu was, so I went and looked it up. It’s a kind of deep-fried hamburger, only the meat is shredded and is usually a blend of beef and pork. I’d eat it if there were any half-decent Japanese restaurants around here.
: “Erk! I… was curious about the line! Like, what could humans want so badly that they would stand in one place for so long-”
: This cutscene is unfortunately not voiced, so I still don’t know how you pronounce Megidolaon.
: “Fine, fine, fine! I’m sorry! I won’t do it again! …Confession time is over! We’re done here!”
: “Were it not for this opportunity, we would have likely kept these matters locked away deep in our hearts.”
: “Why would we do such a thing? I don’t see anyone here to whom we owe any kindness.”
: “Did you think we’d actually regret the treatment we’ve given you so far? By the way, why do humans pray to gods? Shouldn’t they be spending that time trying to solve their problems themselves?”
: Yeah, like when you’re given fuckloads of money to remake a game and still don’t fix the underlying plot issues.
: “Well, isn’t that all too convenient for the humans…”
: “I’ll bet the gods don’t appreciate that answer any more than we do.”
: I’m pretty sure this is a reference to one of the possible negotiation questions in the earlier games.
: “No matter. We’ve come to learn how these places of worship work firsthand. We’ll consider the assignment complete.”
: “Here is your reward.”
: “You know, confessions seem like they’d be rather useful to your rehabilitation. You ought to confess to us every day!”
: “Put that out of mind, Caroline. Once we return, you’re going to tell me all about your experience eating you-know-what…”
: “If you’re done eating, go wash the plate.”
: “Who was that invitation from? Let’s go upstairs and reply once you finish with the dishes.”
: We’re going to spend our morning doing Ryuji’s Rank 9 event. We’ll be finishing his confidant this month, but we have one more of those unique non-rankup scenes to see with him.
: “Pretty damn good, huh? This one’s on me. Don’t expect it to happen too often though. Wait… where’s my wallet? …Eh, whatever.”
: “Oh by the way, I got a text from Takeishi… he said the track team’s gonna try n’ ditch Yamauchi. They wanna start practicin’ without him.”
: “They’re trying to get their old coach back too… the one from before Kamoshida. Looks like they’re finally walkin’ their own path.”
: “Hm… yeah, I guess so. Oh, and uh… they asked me to come back to the team.”
: I’m not sure I understand why this is the right answer, other than that the track team seem like they’re assholes.
: “Dude, I wasn’t gonna. It felt kinda bad, but that’s not where I belong now. When you first came to Shujin, people were talkin’ so much shit about you. But you took it in stride.”
: “You just did whatever you thought was cool, and didn’t care what other people said about you. I think that’s why people kinda get pulled towards you, man. Wherever you decide to be, that’s where you belong.”
: “Seriously? Y’know… back before I met you, I kept makin’ excuses for why I couldn’t fit in. It was always 'cause of someone else. Kamoshida, the track team… hell, I even blamed my dad.”
: “I was such a freakin’ loser… but I’ve realized now… as long as I’m bein’ myself, I’ll always have somewhere I can fit in. It ain’t really the same place as before, but it’s damn good. …I’m just glad I found it.”
: “Heh, don’t worry, man. There’s a place here for you too. Right next to me… or maybe ahead? Something like that.”
: This from what is probably the worst party member in the game.
: Remember when this was a Rank 1 ability in Persona 4, and you didn’t know why until the very end? Persona 4 was a good game.
: “Someday, I’m gonna show you speed so lightnin’ fast, you’re not even gonna be able to see me. Wait, but if you can’t see me, am I really showin’ you anything…?”
: “Eh, whatever. I think we’ve been talking too long. We’re all outta monja… wanna try grillin’ some toothpicks?”
: I hope you’re ready for a phone call that retcons most of the last scene.
: Okay, so… the track team was going to ignore Yamauchi and do their own thing… and then right after you left the monjayaki place you got a call saying they’re not ignoring Yamauchi… what?
: Also, the phrase “I just got a call from them earlier…” doesn’t make any fucking sense. You were with Joker earlier! Fuck! This is approaching Ni no Kuni 2 levels of plot incoherence!
: The thing is, I don’t know why they put this in at all, because it contradicts the Rank 10 scene! Actually, I do know why - it’s because Ryuji is such a non-character that they couldn’t come up with anything else.
: “Thanks, man! I gotta pay you back - you can get some ramen, on me! And then let’s top it off with some seafood soup! A toast to the success of the new track team!”
: The track team that you’re not part of and want nothing to do with anymore? How does this make any fucking sense!? It doesn’t!
: But yeah, we can let the track team handle the rest of their problems. They gotta do the runnin’ from now on. Heh… I’m not gonna let my guard down now! I ain’t about to lose to them!"
: What was the point of that entire phone call? Hell, what’s the point of Ryuji’s entire confidant? What have we learned about him that we didn’t already know by the time Kamoshida’s palace was over?
: I think if I had to point to a single thing to show how this game talks a lot but actually says very little, I’d point to Ryuji’s confidant.
: After this pointless IM exchange, we quickly to go Chihaya to get a Luck Reading for Kindness. Why, you ask? Well, here’s another broken IM to explain.
: Notice how Joker’s response is “Go see it.”
: We get ten points to Kindness.
: “Oh, forgive me. I can’t help but focus more on the visual aspect than on that storyline.”
: Well yeah, it’s Les Mis.
: Joker’s like “Yeah, I stopped paying attention when Wolverine didn’t just bust out of the bastille using his adamantium claws.”
: “Thanks. Well, I already understand that you’re not the type to feel offended by such matters. Thank you for today. The time we spent together was worthwhile. Well then, let’s head home.”
: Yet another scene we wouldn’t see on the reset-heavy route, because we’d have already maxed out Ann’s confidant. I feel kinda bad for whoever had to write these knowing that there’s a good chance no one would ever see them.
: “Meiji Shrine is a Shinto shrine, right? I never thought Lady Ann would be into that traditional stuff…”
: “Should we try praying to the gods, too? It could be about us.”
: “Hey! They’re not so bad I have to ask for divine intervention! No, I want to pray for the future of the Phantom Thieves. Oh, but… I don’t really know how to pray properly.”
: “What should I do? Maybe I’ll ask someone.”
: Joker: “Oh no. I only packed four air horns today. Ann, don’t believe anything Dr. Femdom says, I don’t think she’s even a doctor.”
: “Are you on a date? Such an odd location for someone your age.”
: “Is that so? Well, not that I care.”
: “Um… is this someone you know, Akira?”
: “Don’t worry about me. I don’t intend to intrude. Oh… I assume you’re here for your college entrance exams. You had mentioned them before.”
: “Shake the bell twice and put in your offering. Then bow twice, clap twice, and bow once again. …Wasn’t that what you wanted to ask?”
: I went and fact-checked this, and it looks like that’s actually pretty accurate. The standard ritual for praying at a shrine is two bows, two claps, a prayer, and then a bow.
: There’s a lot more to it than that, though: there’s a specific way you’re supposed to walk through the Torii gate, a whole purification/washing ritual, and the donation itself.
: When I was streaming the recording for the LP, this bit tripped me up. The guide I’m using tells you to pick the option “As expected of a doctor”… which obviously doesn’t exist.
: The reason for this is that the only complete guide for this game on Gamefaqs was apparently taken from a Japanese guide, and I’m guessing they forgot to change the lines over.
: “Wait, you’re a doctor!? Well, you really helped us out. Thank you very much.”
: “Sure. Although… you may want to use this time to actually study for the exams instead of praying.”
: “That’s the doctor who gets us our medicine.”
: Ann whispers to Joker: “Is that why he’s so thirsty for me?”
: “Oh, I see… wait, you’ve been here the whole time!?”
: “How rude! I’m here to protect you!”
: “Yeah, sure… anyway, what is this about praying for college entrance exams?”
: “We asked earlier if she could get us some super stimulants to help us study.”
: We’re doing Hifumi again tonight, and unlock one of the last side areas we didn’t already have access to.
: Jinbocho is home to the final (and most expensive) book store in the game.
: “Today I thought we’d find you something to help you train on your own. This bookstore is filled with shogi-related books. I’ve been coming here a lot lately.”
: “There’s also a curry restaurant just around the corner. I recommend their katsu curry. I always eat katsu curry before an important match… for good luck.”
: “…My apologies. I forgot that there aren’t any matches scheduled for today…”
: “…Sorry. She was only glaring at you because you’re with me. She’s my senior… I defeated her in a recent title match.”
: “Actually… yes! I did have katsu curry before that match. The truth is, I’m not well-liked by my seniors… the more attention I get, the more enemies I make, and the more lies are spread about me…”
: “Perhaps it’s odd to compare myself to them, but… I wonder if it’s the same for the Phantom Thieves. People are so divided about them on the internet. Some love them, while others hate them…”
: She could be talking about Makoto here and it’d still work. Except no one should like Makoto because Makoto sucks.
: “I can’t help but see similarities between us. What do you think about them?”
: “…I feel the same way, actually. It’s amazing that they’re still doing what they do, even though so many people criticize them. They give me courage.”
: “But their victories can’t be won with will alone… how do they change a person’s heart? I’m interested from a tactical standpoint, and… oh, I’m sorry! We really are quite off-topic…”
: “I feel like I’ve become much more talkative as of late. I usually don’t talk this much… you’re more than just someone I can practice new moves with. You’re someone I can confide in.”
: “Um, if you don’t mind this sort of thing… I’d like to go out and chat with you again.”
: “Oh yes, there’s a book that I’d love for you to read. Let’s go.”
: “My intention was to show you how great Jinbocho is, but I ended up just talking about myself… my apologies. I was shocked, though. Ordinarily, I don’t talk that much, I assure you…”
: “Perhaps it’s because I never had friends at school who I could talk to about shogi… I hope this won’t discourage you from spending time with me. Really, I would be delighted to do this again.”
: “Thank you! Other than used books and katsu curry, there are many things I’d like to recommend in that city. If you have the chance, perhaps we can explore more of the city next time.”
: “Well, I’m afraid I must go. I’ll see you at the church.”
: Next time, we’ll spend a lot of time with Yusuke, unlock a thing that we’re going to make a minor schedule change to accomodate, and continue to be ahead of schedule and under budget.
I’m just imagining John Persona growing increasingly exasperated as he keeps repeating “But I already have a boyfriend!”
