Click Here for Update 82
: “What? You’re asking if the Phantom Thieves would be given a trial if they get caught? Of course they would. All they would need to do is prove a link between the deaths and their activities.”
: “In short, they would be put on trial for murder. Hey, Kurusu. Tell me how old you have to be to listen in on a trial.”
: “That’s right. No age restrictions for listening in on a trial - you can get in whether you’re 0 or 85. Youth crimes are an exception, but it’s basically open to the public. Meaning you can all go attend.”
: This is also true for the United States, although that’s becoming less and less necessary with the courts modernizing and allowing cameras in the courtroom.
: “Well, I imagine the visitors seats will be full if the Phantom Thieves were put to trial. Everyone is dying to know who exactly the culprits are and how they did it.”
: “However, their method and how it connects to the murder must be proven in order to sentence them. The methods that the Phantom Thieves use far exceed human knowledge.”
: I know Japan’s gun laws are among the most restrictive in the world, but I’m pretty sure people there know how a gun works.
: “I’d imagine in order to prove it, they’d have to catch them in the act. Hmmm…”
: We have two confidants we need to do before we can go to the casino. Originally, I was going to put this after the casino instead, but that would put it in the same update as her Rank 9 and Rank 10.
: “Yes?”
: “The hospital on the news?”
: “…Wh-What’s going on?”
: “I haven’t… seen it…”
: “What? Um… it’s something that shouldn’t be allowed to happen… I guess.”
: “Is this all some elaborate joke? Oyamada surrendering himself… at such a convenient time… why? …It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. It doesn’t change the fact that I couldn’t save her.”
: “What…!? There’s… no way…”
: “So she’s… she’s alive…”
: “…Yes, of course! You’ll help me, right? I take back what I said. We’ll resume development right away.”
: “We’re going to move quickly today, so you may experience some pain during the examination. …Sorry. Just hang in there, okay?”
: “Thank you. You’re… a good guy. Once the medicine is perfected, I’ll introduce you to Miwa-chan and tell her how much you helped. All right, into the examination room you go.”
: “I pushed you way too hard today. Really, I’m sorry… but I won’t waste the opportunity you’re giving me. We’re going to make up for our lost time.”
: “God, what was wrong with me…? I can’t believe I spent all that time moping. Feeling sorry for myself. Miwa-chan was fighting all that time. I have to fight for her too.”
: “Thanks… it’s honestly encouraging knowing I’ve got you supporting me. We’re so close to making this drug work… I just have to perfect it. Anyways, get some good rest today. Remember you can call me anytime. Okay, goodnight…”
: I like a lot of these post-request cutscenes, and I wish more of the game was written like that.
: We’ll also be seeing Iwai’s Rank 9 immediately after the casino.
: “Tsuda rang me up a while back. Told me to forget everythin’ he was threatenin’ me with. I honestly thought it was some kinda joke at first, but I ain’t seen or heard from him since.”
: “Y’know, it almost felt like I was talkin’ to the old Tsuda somehow. My sworn brother… Hey, you think a guy can really go through a drastic change that quick?”
: Your friend is a total dumbass, so yeah probably.
: “What kinda answer is that? I ain’t really one to talk, but you should prolly think about takin’ this a little more seriously, kid. Anyways, somethin’ fishy is still goin’ down… but Tsuda changin’ is a real load off my shoulders.”
: “Oh, and this prolly means our deal’s through with, huh? I mean, your end of the bargain was drivin’ Tsuda away… and you did that and then some.”
: “One more thing… I know I kinda fired you n’ all, but d’you think you’d maybe wanna keep workin’ here with me? I understand kids these days have all sortsa commitments, so I get it if the answer’s gotta be no…”
: Were the localizers trying to set a new record for number of vestigial apostrophes in a sentence?
: “Heh, don’t gimme that attitude. I know you wanna come back. Don’t go expectin’ me to make the job any easier for you though, y’hear? I’ll be countin’ on you, kid. I mean, uh… Akira.”
: “All right, first order of business is takin’ out the trash. C’mon, we gotta get rid of these prototypes. Disassemble 'em and wipe the prints off before we toss 'em though, okay?”
: You’d think that if the garbage people saw a bag full of model guns next to a shop that, well, sells model guns they probably wouldn’t ask too many questions - and it’s not like they’re illegal anyway.
: “Oh, and I’m not lettin’ you leave 'til they’re done.”
: “About Tsuda… let’s keep an eye on him for a while. Seemed like he was on the level, but… can’t be too careful.”
: “Good. If anything bad happened, it’d already be too late. I’m just gonna hang back and run the store for a while. Safer that way. And that means…”
: “I’m gonna teach you all you gotta know about the business. Hope you’re ready for it. Okay. I’m countin’ on you, Akira.”
: And now it’s casino time.
: I got a money reading and a celestial reading for alarms, but I never wound up using any. We can’t clear the casino in one day anyway, so it’s not a big deal that I didn’t.
: “And for that, we will need to have a member’s card.”
: “Where’re we gonna get one though? There’s not too many places we can go right now.”
: “Hm… I doubt we will find one simply lying on the ground in the main hall. I suggest we head for the backroom.”
: “Huh…? But why?”
: “I will explain later. In any case, let’s try to find an entrance.”
: We have to go the same way we went the last time we were here - there’s a save room on the ground floor, but the game won’t let you open it the first time you’re here.
: Going through the vent puts us on the ledge where we first met Sae’s shadow earlier.
: The first floor has enemies that we’ve already fused as Personas several dungeons ago. Even if we hadn’t done any extra grinding, I think we’d still be high enough level to insta-kill these.
: Joker oneshots anything he hits, and the rest are taken out quickly by a combination of Haru’s gun and a follow-up by Ann.
: Speaking of which, you can customize the ultimate guns from the get-go in Royal. Most of them you want accuracy on, especially Haru’s (which goes from 70% to 77%).
: The human NPCs will comment on Joker’s appearance (and some other things) if you get close enough.
: Also present on the first floor are Ose and Kikuri-Hime, who I had actually fused to get… actually, I can’t remember why I fused them, I just kinda did. There was a reason.
: Now, let me show you why it’s so hard to get Akechi’s finisher screen.
: The reason is because he has already learned Eigaon, which does enough damage to oneshot most of the enemies here. He starts at… I think level 44, which we had already surpassed in Okumura’s palace.
: “Then let us check around. We may find something useful.”
: “Like… what?”
: “Mwehehe… I get it. You mean some kinda customer data terminal.”
: “Haha, I am glad you’re so quick to understand. Though even if I were to find such a terminal, there is nothing my meager skills could do about it…”
: “That’s where I come in. Leave it all to me!”
: The back room is a Persona 1 style hallway maze, only without any of the things that made Persona 1 interesting. The casino as a whole is basically a defanged Thanatos Tower.
: The problem with the casino is really that the map sucks - it wasn’t really designed for dungeons with overlapping floors. It also has a lot of rooms that serve no purpose.
: There’s a box about halfway through that you can climb to get to where the first will seed is.
: I think it’s technically possible to get this without backtracking if you know what you’re doing, but I kind of had very few memories of this dungeon beyond the general structure and what the boss fight is.
: In the back rooms, we find a second kind of stealable.
: This one contains a new treasure demon, Orlov. The real stone it is modeled after was supposedly stolen from a Hindu temple by a French soldier, but that’s not actually true.
: The Orlov started out much in the same way the Koh-i-noor did, in that it was mined in the Mughal Empire and was later taken when the Mughals fell - in its case, it wound up in Persia and was then lost when the king of Persia was assassinated.
: It was traded around for a while, and then ended up in Amsterdam, where it was purchased by a Russian count by the name of Grigory Grigorevich Orlov. It was then set into a scepter belonging to Catherine the Great, and is stored in the Kremlin today.
: Orlov is weak to curse, so we let Akechi handle it and then grab it for compendium purposes.
: There’s another save room at the end of this area.
: Right outside the save room, we run into a group of Ose. Now’s our chance to get Akechi’s finisher screen so I can stop using him forever.
: “That thing really doesn’t want anyone gettin’ past there, huh… you wanna try attackin’ it?”
: “What do you want to do, Joker? We’ll go along with whatever you decide.”
: There actually is a way around fighting this encounter, but it’s INCREDIBLY badly signposted. First, let me show you the map of this area.
: The thing is, there’s no indication on the map that you can even sneak around the enemy. There actually is a way to do it… that I had to look up a guide to find. I want to re-record part of the casino anyway, so I’ll show the alternate solution after this.
: For the record, you still do this same fight in the alternate path, it’s just that you get an ambush on the enemy instead of facing them head-on. Consider this my equivalent of intentionally pinching Kumi in Hypnos Tower.
: The fight is against two Queen Mabs, who are weak to wind. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit Wind Boost and Wind Amp (it really whips the llama’s ass) onto Michael, so this merely does 60% of the enemy’s HP in damage rather than killing her outright.
: I tried negotiating just to see if I could do it, because this is realistically the only chance we’re going to get. Getting Personas from auto-winning fights is kind of a crapshoot because (with some exceptions) you can’t really tell which one you’re going to get.
: “Hey, it dropped something… is this some kinda keycard?”
: “Nice find! Maybe this’ll let us open that barred door.”
: Your other option is to go up these boxes over to the right, which for some reason are not marked on the map.
: The boxes lead to a vent, which you can crawl through to get to the other side of the door where that shadow is.
: Now, here’s why I think this entire thing is dumb. Let’s say you do this, and try to continue onward after skipping that fight.
: The only thing past that door is a door we can’t open because we don’t have the keycard for it. If we go down even further…
: “Talk about bein’ heavily guarded. They’re practically screamin’ 'bout how there’s something important in there.”
: “It would be foolish to overlook this, though perhaps even more foolish to meet them head on… what is your call, Joker?”
: Let’s pretend we don’t already have the keycard, and do this fight head-on as well.
: You get two fights against a Unicorn and a Valkyrie. Both will die very quickly to Akechi, but Joker can also straight up oneshot either of them at this point.
: Behind them is… an empty room with a door we can’t open because it’s locked from the other side. This fight is truly skippable.
: If we go through the keycard door instead, there’s a vent that will take us to where we’ve been trying to get to this entire time.
: “Okay then, let’s hurry up and take that guard down!”
: The guard is a single Ganesha, not even close to a challenge at this point. I think I managed to kill this one using only guns - Haru got a shock off with hers and then Ann followed up with a Technical.
: Having ultimate equipment this early is great.
: “Ah, aren’t those what we’re looking for? Oh, there are no names on them. They’ll be unusable if they remain unregistered.”
: “Mweheheh! I can handle that!”
: “I wasn’t sure what name to give it, so I just thought of a random one: Taro Tanaka.”
: “That’s way too simple! Aren’t they gonna figure that out?”
: Admittedly, if this were me, I’d probably have named them after the aliens from Buckaroo Banzai. That movie is a fucking experience.
: “Um, they already know what we look like, and that we’ve intruded into the Palace… then again, it’s prolly better to be safe than sorry.”
: It would’ve made a lot more sense thematically for Sae’s shadow to give them the player card at the start, the way Kaneshiro gave Makoto the bank card in his palace.
: The whole idea, as we’ll see in a bit, is that the courthouse has become a casino where Sae always wins and the goal is to fuck over the people playing - the defendants in the court.
: You can even hear this in the music for the casino, with the whole “roll the dice, spin the wheel” bit being stand-ins for the criminal justice system.
: It just would’ve made more sense because they’d be “customers” of the court the same way Makoto was a “customer” at Kaneshiro’s brain bank. Though what would I know, I’m not a JRPG writer.
: “Okay, the fake name for this card is a little more elaborate this time: Shinji Nakanomatsu.”
: “Joker, you can hold on to this card and the map. Don’t lose them, 'kay? As for the Taro Tanaka card… hmmm… Crow, get rid of it next time you see a garbage can.”
: “Hm? Why me?”
: If I was writing this, I absolutely would’ve had Futaba say something like “Because the trash is where you belong.”
: “These kinds of chores always fall to the newbie.”
: “…Oh.”
: “We can also use that elevator now, right?”
: “According to the map, it would be quicker to use this path than to go back the way we came.”
: As usual, Makoto is wrong. I’ll show you why, but first…
: Okay, so now let’s assume that you’ve already backtracked for the will seed and you’re in the control room we were just in.
: Going through the vent takes you to this room, which has a keycard door (and nothing else) in it. This will take you past where those two enemies were that we fought earlier.
: There’s a few more staircases and a lot of pointless bullshit. By the way, I realized I haven’t shown off Megidolaon yet.
: Just imagine if I’d gotten Almighty Boost and Almighty Amp. Problem is, that’d take a lot of effort at this point to get and then fuse onto something I could fuse into Uriel. I’d then have to make a Michael specifically to carry those to Lucifer.
: At the end of this hallway is another keycard door. If we take this, we wind up…
: Back at the top of the main area, right across from where we came in. There’s a vent just off to the right you can use to get back down.
: Or you could, you know… backtrack less than half that distance down the stairs to the save room, and then use that to warp to the one on the ground floor right next to the elevator.
: “It didn’t say nothing about the one for the manager…”
: “Well, the floors we have access to are limited by player ranking. That must mean the members floor is the highest we can go for now.”
: “Heh, members floor. I’ll fit right in.”
: “It’s impossible to mess with the data on the card too. It’s nothing like the ones I’ve seen before.”
: “So we can’t go directly to the manager’s floor… in that case, what exactly should we do?”
: “Our first move should be to head upward. Either way, we have no more business on this floor.”
: Sae’s shadow has a tramp stamp of a doberman. Somehow, I don’t think that gives off quite the message that Soejima intended it to. Then again, Soejima might’ve just been horny.
: “You wanna just get this over with right now, huh? That makes this easy. Bring it on.”
: “Do not speak to me as though you are my equal. I am the manager of this casino, as well as its number-one player. At the moment, you lack the qualifications to fight me.”
: “It would seem she looks down on us.”
: “And what if we would like to battle you, no matter what?”
: “I had to win time and time again in order to reach my number-one rank. If you want to face me, you must continue to win as well.”
: “Continue to win?”
: Metal Gear!?
: “It must have to do with the fact that this place is a casino.”
: “Correct. Do you have the confidence to win?”
: “We might just pull the rug out from underneath you if you aren’t careful.”
: What the fuck is that facial expression.
: “It’s going up…”
: “I wasn’t expecting to come all the way to a Palace only to end up gambling…”
: Clearly Yusuke never did Snow Queen.
: “What about you guys?”
: “Looks like this is going to take longer than expected.”
: “We don’t got time to waste!”
: “No need to worry. Leave this to me.”
: “You know how to do this?”
: Well yeah, of course I do. First you start Code Breaker, you make a savestate, and then find out what the code is and reload to get a million casino coins so you can skip the grind.
: “I’m well-informed on what it takes to win. In any case, we need to hurry and change her heart. If she acts recklessly, both her chances of promotion and reputation as prosecutor will drop greatly.”
: “Sae-san didn’t use to be like this, did she?”
: “My sister must have lost her sense of justice because her desires became distorted…”
: “Do you think there was a particular event that triggered her Palace’s creation?”
: It was when she realized she was an inferior ripoff of Katsuya Suou.
: “My sister took on all the responsibilities of dealing with it herself. Trying to earn a living wage, gain a promotion in a male society, and uphold justice at the same time… those things may have weighed her down and led to the distortion within her heart.”
: This game uses the word “distortion” like Kingdom Hearts uses “darkness”.
: “…My apologies, but we don’t have time to be sentimental. The longer we wait, the more people will learn about us. The investigation will advance as well. Hence, we must infiltrate this Palace as quickly as possible.”
: “She did challenge us to reach her, after all. Niijima’s Treasure must be at her managerial base of operations. Either way, we have to get there!”
: “It should be quite clear. We must play in the casino and win. Customers are divided into the different floors based on the rank of their play. If we wish to enter a higher floor, we will need to increase our rank.”
: I think we know that. Also, you might want to cool it on the red text or people will think this is Umineko.
: “And as I kinda mentioned earlier, a different kinda member’s card is used depending on your rank. We’ll have to obtain a card for the high limit floor somewhere around here.”
: “For real!? Ugh, what a pain!”
: “Why don’t we begin by walking around this floor? That should be a solid approach for acquiring intel.”
: The game will make us stop at the cashier before we do anything.
: “So all of this is going according to her plan… I cannot help but feel we’re being manipulated here.”
: The chip tracker will stay with us for the rest of this dungeon.
: “He’s just giving them to us!?”
: “Perhaps this is a show of confidence. It seems she truly has no intention of losing.”
: I hate that the way they word this, it makes it seem like the dungeon is non-linear and you can complete the slots room first, but you can’t. This is a totally linear dungeon.
: “That means we should probably start with the dice game… right?”
: “Prizes? What kind of things can we get?”
: Nothing great. This counter has a Soma (full SP restore) and a Bead Chain (full party HP restore) in addition to the item we need to progress.
: “I see… I believe I have figured out Sae-san’s intent behind this. She wants us to obtain that card by winning coins in the casino.”
: No fucking shit!
: “That’s absurd! 50,000 coins!?”
: Come to think of it, wasn’t 50,000 about the number of casino coins you need to have a chance at doing Thanatos Tower first?
: “I don’t wanna do that! Owin’ cash to a weird-ass casino in someone’s head is way too weird!”
: “Oh well… standing around here won’t get us anywhere. So, should we head to this dice game?”
: “Actually, do you mind if I speak to you all beforehand? There is something on my mind.”
: “It would not surprise me in the least if all the games here were somehow rigged.”
: You know what, I’m going to call it. Akechi/Makoto ship. They deserve each other. We’ve already seen they’re rigging shit, dumbass!
: “You think she’s cheatin’!?”
: “Remember, this is a courthouse in the real world. Sae-san is quite particular about ‘winning’ here. To compound that, defendants in Japan are prosecuted at a 99.9% success rate - defendants are nearly always found guilty.”
: Hashino, let’s be real here. I’ve played all of the Ace Attorney games. I’m seriously considering doing an LP of Great Ace Attorney Chronicle when it comes out. I’ve had that on pre-order for months.
: Shu Takumi is a far better writer than you could ever hope to be. Please leave the critique of the Japanese justice system to him.
: “What!? How can a rate like that really be possible? Are all those verdicts accurate?”
: From what I’ve heard, yes. However, I’m not sure where people get that specific statistic from. It’s also hard to make a comparison to the US because of the US’s tiered court system, and the fact that there are 50 separate state court systems.
: “No… the investigators are merely human.”
: “Then…”
: “You are not the first to point out the rigged nature of this system. The prosecution is nigh-unbeatable. That’s why cases of false accusation cause such a stir: they are exceedingly rare.”
: That’s kind of a questionable statement. The Innocence Project in the US estimates that around 4% of defendants in capital cases (read: death penalty) are wrongly convicted. That number becomes higher for non-capital cases, somewhere around 6%.
: “But it’s total bullshit gettin’ arrested even when you’re not guilty!”
: “Indeed - and if we do not hurry, the Phantom Thieves will fall victim to a similar fate.”
: “We’re going to win this, no matter what.”
: There’s some gift boxes lying around that give you either 100 or 200 casino coins. If you want all the prizes, you’re going to want to grab these.
: There are rule tablets for the dice game and the slots, which… why do these exist? The entire point of the dungeon is that the games are rigged - you can’t actually play them anyway.
: “Y-Yeah, I guess… that’s not really how a normal high schooler would describe it though…”
: “In any case, we should proceed further in.”
: I’m going to show you the easiest way to do this, which comes from my second run.
: See all those rooms on the map? Ignore them! I don’t even know why they’re here. There’s lots of stealables here though, so you might as well grab those first.
: If you take a left from the door where you enter the area, there’s a vent. This is where we want to go, though we can ignore about half the maze behind it.
: “Super convenient, don’tcha think?”
: “Oooh, so we’re gonna catch 'em in the act! I guess that’s easy… c’mon, let’s get to it!”
: Let’s talk about why this area sucks. See the map here?
: These two areas in white are actually connected - but they’re not connected on the map. One other thing I’d like you to notice is that if you look in the top-left, you can see a little thing representing the vent we crawled through to get in here, with an arrow to indicate that it goes somewhere else.
: That entire area in red? Pointless bullshit! There’s some stealables in there, and a chest with a weapon for Makoto…
: Which isn’t even better than the dumbass bear fists that we itemized off Bugs. By this point, most people are going to be within level range to fuse Bugs without needing to max Caroline and Justine.
: Anyway, let’s go back and take a look at some of the pointless bullshit, because I spent a while in here.
Returning Persona: Valkyrie
Origin: Norse Mythology
First Appearance: Megami Tensei II
Battle maidens of Norse mythology who bring the souls of dead warriors to Valhalla, where they spend eternity preparing for Ragnarok.
: Valkyrie is a pure physical Persona who we have no real reason to use at this point. She’s not that great even if you’re not using overpowered bullshit like we are.
: I’d make a Valkyrie Profile joke here, but the only one of those I’ve played is the DS one, which is fucking garbage. It’s a game that forces you to “overkill” enemies or you die even though you’ve cleared the stage.
: It also commits the cardinal sin of being a game about “do not do the thing” and then forcing you to do that thing because the AI cheats so hard that you can’t win any other way. Fuck that shit!
: There’s some game coming out which is basically that but with furries (where it’s apparently about a bunch of furries in a tank that has a gun that requires a human sacrifice to fire) and I know they’re going to pull the same shit there.
New Persona: Kushinada
Origin: Japan
First Appearance: Megami Tensei II
Lesser goddess who was to be a sacrifice to Yamata-no-Orochi until she was saved by Susano-O. Comb imagery comes from Susano turning her into a comb to hide her from Orochi. Later became Susano’s wife.
: Personally, I prefer her appearance in Okami. Kushinada’s moveset kind of sucks, given that she has no offensive skills whatsoever, but she comes up in a lot of fusion lists for end-game stuff.
: Okay, so back to the second run. This door right here is the one you want. Notice that although it goes to a different area, it doesn’t have the arrow next to it the way the vent does.
: “So this is the cheating control room… what should we do, Joker?”
: “Very well. Let us dispatch it swiftly.”
: The guard is a Nebiros, which is exclusive to the area of Mementos covering Sae’s palace. It’s also part of a special fusion for Alice, the final Death Persona.
: Nebiros is weak to Bless, and given that we have all four of the canonical archangels, this isn’t much of a challenge.
: “C’mon, we should stop the rigging.”
: “Hold on a moment, I have an idea I’d like to discuss.”
: “Whaddya wanna talk about?”
: “I’ve devised an easier way of doing this… a way to get all the coins we need.”
: “All of them in here?”
: “Is that even possible?”
: I had to check the base game LP briefly to see if I had missed a line here (I didn’t) and they pointed out that everyone except Makoto and Futaba disappears when the camera turns.
: Now, you can call this bad cutscene direction… but it’s my firm belief that Ryuji got bored and went to go find tacos, and just took everyone else with him.
: They make it back before the scene ends because that’s how long-winded Akechi is. Futaba didn’t go because she spends most of her time in palaces playing video games on her headset and didn’t notice everyone else leaving, and Joker didn’t go because he had to cover for everyone else.
: “You can do that!?”
: Ryuji is actually reacting to the person at the taco place telling him he can, in fact, order a burrito the size of a newspaper and then have that burrito dipped in crushed doritos.
: “Wait, this is a job for me! It’ll be a breeze!”
: “Cheating seems somehow wrong though…”
: “The odds here are stacked against us. We would never win if we stuck to normal methods. We do not have any time to waste either. It would be best for us to focus on our objective.”
: “…You’re right. Changing my sister’s heart is the ultimate goal here.”
: “I feel bad asking this, but may we borrow your expertise yet another time, Oracle?”
: “I’m game! But man, you sure give a lot of orders for a noob!”
: Meanwhile, Haru and Yusuke are running down the street trying to order curry for Futaba. Ann is buying out the cream puffs at the bakery.
: “Okay, I rigged one of the rooms in our favor, just like Crow said. The other rooms should at least be back to normal honest gambling now too. Anyway, I marked our special room on the map. Make sure you use that one!”
: “Perfect. Now, let us head into the fray.”
: There’s a door right around the corner from the control room you can use to get back to where the dice games are.
: I like to think that at this moment, Joker’s phone rings. It’s Ryuji. “So, uh… can you do me a favor and ask Morgana what happens if you spill nacho cheese in someone’s brain?”
: The game explains the rules, which don’t matter, but I’ll explain them briefly. You roll three dice and guess whether they’ll be over or under 10.5. Getting the over/under right doubles your bet. Getting three matching dice triples it.
: If you get three sixes, you win five times your initial bet regardless of what your prediction was. The usual bet amount is 25 coins, but as we’ll see…
: “There is no need to worry. We will most certainly win.”
: I have no idea why they even have you do this, because the result is the same no matter what you pick.
: We repeat this three times.
: “We’ve got what we need - our next move’s up to you, Joker.”
: “Have we reached our goal?”
: “It still may not be enough.”
: “Are you seriously planning on taking every last coin in here?”
: “Ahaha, it was a joke. However, it would be nice to have a little more coinage on hand, would it not? Everyone wait here. Skull, I would like you to come with me.”
: This scene is not going to make any sense when we get to the slot room.
: “Why me?”
: “Because I am the ‘brains’ here, am I not?”
: “Huh? Oh, sure.”
: “…Time to see what he’s made of.”
: “That was amazing! It was like magic!”
: “I could totally get addicted to this!”
: “Where are Crow and Skull?”
: There’s a scene in the slot room where the party wins this gigantic pool of chips, and Makoto goes “Oh, they don’t matter, the total gets added to the player card when you win.” Presumably, Akechi knows this as well.
: “Whoa…”
: “So… heavy…”
: “Amazing… we managed to get our hands on 6800 coins…”
: “We still have a long way before we reach our goal though. Now then, on to the slot machines.”
: Ignore the chip counter, I took this shot earlier.
: This is just like the dice room in that we never actually have to play slots. In fact, there is no slots minigame.
: “We’re here to make money, not to play your games!”
: Atlus’s slogan for Persona as a franchise past Eternal Punishment. “We’re here to milk money from our fanbase, not make games!”
: In the base game, this fight was against three Kumbhandas. Instead, we get a fight against one Jatayu, who is significantly higher level.
: Joker gets a shock off using Gabriel, and then Haru finishes it before it can move. Haru’s gun can do some serious damage on a technical.
: “Wait, why didn’t the guests around us react to that battle?”
: “Perhaps as she sees it, they only care for their own victory, while ignoring the needs of others.”
: “That reaction is certainly different from what we saw on the lower floor. I wonder if that trend grows stronger the higher up you go in the court system.”
: “It is possible. In any case, we can now freely access the Slot Room. We should go look around… although I doubt we will find a fair fight waiting for us in this scamming casino.”
: I originally came in here to grab any gift boxes lying around, mostly because I wanted to experiment and see if Futaba’s thing that replaces the stealables works on them. It doesn’t.
: “I would expect they’re all rigged to prevent us from winning.”
: “Then should we deal with that first?”
: “No, I believe it would be prudent to examine this slot area further. Casinos hold their higher-limit slots somewhere in the back. If we were going to circumvent their trick, would it not be more efficient to do so on those?”
: This statement is kind of confusing, because the high-limit slots are actually in another room that we have to go through the maintenance area to get to.
: “That’s assuming we’ll even be able to solve the problem.”
: “I trust in your ability to handle such a matter.”
: “A-aight, let’s go look for that sweet, sweet slot machine!”
: First though… you see that thing on the wall? That’s important. You can examine it to have it added to your map.
: “Can you mess with it and figure out how they’re cheating, Navi?”
: “Welllll… this one’s on standby. Uh, basically I’m gonna have to activate it remotely from a main terminal somewhere else.”
: “So this one is useless unless we can access the main hub. Oh well. We should at least commit this place to memory for now.”
: The back door leads to the maintenance area, which has a very obvious path that is not the one we want to take. All this does is loop you back to the slot room.
: Instead, you want to jump down here to make this entire process as painless as possible.
: This area has the green terminal, which is the other one we need. There’s two dummy terminals - the yellow and one the blue one - which we don’t need.
: Right across from the green terminal is this pile of crap we can climb up to get to where the second will seed is.
: On the same platform as the will seed room is a vent that will take us right where we need to go. The rest of this area? Fuck it! You can skip it! There’s nothing in there except some chests with shit you don’t need.
: There’s a door nearby you can open with the keycard that provides a shortcut back to the main slots room and that other terminal we saw.
: “This must be the main hall of the slot room.”
: The slot area has bunnygirl shadows. They’re in the first part too, but I couldn’t get a good shot of them without getting spotted.
: “Wait, all cherries wins you 5,000 coins, BAR gets you 10,000, while a 777 gives you 50,000!? Whoa! That’ll get us all the coins we need in one fell swoop!”
: “Assuming we can win, that is. If the reward’s high, the risk will surely be high as well.”
: “Either way, our goal here is to gain a member’s card for the high limit floor. It would make the most sense for us to utilize this slot machine in some way, shape or form. However…”
: “Lemme guess, ‘We will need to stop their cheating first’? There’s no doubt this one’s rigged too.”
: “Haha, I’m glad you understand. Now then, let us search the area. Hopefully we will find something that can give us a little more information about this slot.”
: “There’s prolly a terminal for info back behind the thing. Try looking there, Joker.”
: There’s a chest on one side of the machine. The control panel is on the other side.
: “Mweheheh… let’s see… wow, they’re going really hard on this whole cheating angle. We wouldn’t have won a penny here.”
: “Do you think you’ll be able to disable their rigging of it?”
: “Not from this terminal. It looks like there are multiple different-colored control panels throughout this area. Out of those, I’ll need the red and green ones. I should be able to control things from there.”
: “Do you know where we can find them though?”
: I’ll just cut this short because we already know where they are. Futaba will explain that one’s near the entrance to the area and one’s in the back room.
: “Gotcha! We’ll be done after this!”
: “…Hold on.”
: “C’mon, what now?”
: I like to think that everyone realized they were in for Akechi overexplaining the obvious, so they went out for ice cream. Ann stayed behind because Ryuji offered to pay for her and bring it back if he didn’t have to wait instead.
: Ryuji orders a cone because he wanted a waffle cone, and gets ice cream dripped all over the carpet in the member lobby. The carpet is forever ruined by ice cream and nacho cheese.
: “So you want to take advantage of the system, just like we did for the dice game.”
: “Essentially. My aim here is the giant slot machine.”
: “You mean the one that’s 5,000 coins a play!? I don’t know if that’s really possible…!”
: “Oooh, sounds like fun to me. Just gimme a sec.”
: “The giant one’s still only on an 8:2 ratio though. There’s honestly no guarantee it’ll work properly.”
: Couldn’t you just borrow 6,000 chips or whatever first? That’d give you two shots at an 80% chance of winning.
: “Does that mean it will still miss two times out of ten? That’s somewhat concerning…”
: “It should be fine. Nothing the Phantom Thieves do can ever be considered truly risk-free, after all. If we want to succeed, we simply have no other choice but this.”
: Yes, putting all of your chips into a slot machine that has an 80% chance of giving you a 33% chance at getting the amount of chips you need is a solid plan. Wait, no it isn’t.
: Anyway, the game will offer to warp you right to the big slot machine, so let’s do that.
: “I-I wonder if we’ll actually manage to score that 50,000…”
: “She’s right. There’s a 20% chance the rig won’t work, and even if we win, it might not be enough.”
: “This is a big gamble, Joker. Are you sure about this?”
: “50,000 coins, hm? …You truly are special, Joker.”
: “It is no surprise the customers are reacting to this commotion. We should leave for now.”
: So yeah, that scene earlier? The only reason I can think of it for it to exist is because Akechi wanted to feel superior by making Ryuji push around a thing full of chips.
: “I wonder if we’ll be able to use that slot machine again…”
: “You wish to win more coins? I’m pretty sure we have enough.”
: “More is always better than less. Then again, I suppose we are already good to go.”
: “That’s right… we have 50,000 coins now! Let’s go exchange them for a member’s card to the high limit floor!”
: The game offers to warp us back to the cashier, so let’s do that. I realized I forgot to get shots of the red shadow here as well, so let’s grab one quick.
: The red shadows here are Skadi, and they only show up in the dice game area as far as I know - I cleared the rest of the palace without running into one. Like all red shadows, they will not negotiate until they are at very low HP.
: Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to negotiate with one because I kept accidentally shocking them, which prevents negotiations. I’ll just log it anyway, because her origin is kind of interesting.
New Persona: Skadi
Origin: Norse Mythology
First Appearance: Nocturne
Skadi (also called the “Snowshoe Goddess”) is a ice giantess in Norse mythology. She is the mother of Freyr (who was Ayase’s ultimate Persona in Persona 1) and Freya (who was added to Royal) and is associated with skiing and winter.
Her design in the Megami Tensei games is based on a false interpretation by an author named Barbara Walker, who re-interpreted her as a Celtic goddess of shadows - essentially turning her into a Celtic Scathach. Walker’s writing also influenced the design for Mem Aleph in Strange Journey.
: Basically, the lesson here is never trust anyone named Barbara. It’s a lesson that has served me well in life.
: Now that we have the coins, we can just buy out the store.
: “We finally have the card! Let’s do our best on the next floor as well.”
: “I hope I was able to contribute in some meaningful way. Come, let us head over to the elevator.”
: “This must be due to the instigation of Sae-san. We should be prepared to fight.”
: “We merely followed your rules.”
: “Hmph! I am the manager of this casino, and the rules deem that I am the victor!”
: “It appears both the Sae-san of the real world and that of this world are at their wit’s end…”
: “…I think our guests will be leaving now.”
: “You’re the only one who’s gonna be leaving, black suit!”
: “Things would’ve been so much simpler if we could do this from the start!”
: This time, we’re up against a Norn, which is a common encounter in the second half of this dungeon. I opt to go for a good old-fashioned devil busting by means of shooting it until it dies.
: Norn is a significant downgrade from Innocent Sin, when all three of the major Norns were individual Personas (Verdandi was Maki’s ultimate Persona in 1).
: Like an increasing number of enemies, Norn has no weaknesses. This one will Diarahan itself for a full heal, but we can still gun it down.
: “Criminal trials are but a gamble to be won, and us prosecutors arrange the gambling table. Hence, losses are unacceptable! We must win, even if it has to be on false charges!”
: “Are you serious, Sis!? Why won’t you answer me!?”
: “Mako-chan…”
: “Don’t think such a petty trick could defeat me. I may have to acknowledge your skills - if you can make it up to the manager’s floor, that is.”
: “She thinks the trials which shape the outcomes of people’s lives are nothing more than gambles? I wish I didn’t have to hear that from Sae-san herself…”
: “Sis is completely distorted! We have to stop her, quickly!”
: “We all feel the same way.”
: “There’s no time to waste. She mentioned something about a manager’s floor, right? Let’s try heading up there. We’ll change Niijima-san’s heart for sure.”
: “Huh, the manager’s floor still isn’t showing up…”
: “But she’s so close I can almost smell her! The next floor’s prolly gonna be the last one.”
: “I said, outta the way!”
: “We shouldn’t cause a scene.”
: “It seems there is some kind of requirement we must meet before we can access this high limit floor.”
: “Even though we got the coins?”
: Sae’s Palace is the first one since Madarame’s where we can’t clear it in one day due to there being a barrier… even if thematically, the barrier doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
: “It must be related to my sister’s cognition in some way…”
: “I can’t imagine how though…”
: “Her cognition? Essentially, Sae-san needs to think of us as being allowed to enter, correct? Hm. This casino is the courthouse in reality… so that floor must be a place only authorized personnel are given access to…”
: “… I would say it has to be the courtroom.”
: The idea of a courtroom as being a “restricted area” makes a lot less sense for a game that takes place in 2016. Remember, Japan’s justice system had started reintroducing juries in 2009, which would probably account for a good part of Sae’s legal career.
: There’s also the whole thing with people being able to observe trials, but according to that article, it rarely happened due to trials in Japan being very boring to watch, even compared to trials in the US.
: “You really are an ace detective.”
: “He’s come to understand the workings of the cognitive world so quickly.”
: “I was just like that too, right?”
: “I just understood it right away though. No need for that logic stuff.”
: “That aside, how are we going to get into the courtroom?”
: “Ryuji! Go piss off the police!”
: “Hell no!”
: “We just need to attend a trial. Still, how are we supposed to know which trials my sister will be attending?”
: “Leave that to me. I have some connections in mind. I will contact you once I manage to arrange a time.”
: I wound up leaving without even using the fusion alarm.
: “It feels like we’re fairly close to the Treasure now. There’s no doubt we’re nearing the end.”
: “It seems we have a solid overall understanding of this place. I assume this is simple for you? Either way, please let me know when we are meeting next. I will be eagerly awaiting your call.”
: “We really can’t fail this time. Let’s go about this carefully. After we go to the courtroom tomorrow, we should head straight into the Palace.”
: Just like Morgana says, we’re being launched directly into the second half of the dungeon with no time in between. This means no money reading or alarm reading.
: After getting a massage from Kawakami, we’re doing Mishima’s Rank 9 tonight.
: “Let’s talk at the diner then. It’ll probably surprise you… but we can talk some more over there.”
: “Well, it turns out they were really dangerous. I looked them up… and found some seriously scary info. Apparently they’re part of a gang that’s involved in extortion stuff like that all the time.”
: “I wish I had known that going in… one slip of the tongue in that act I pulled, and I would’ve been dead.”
: “Me too! Now I really know the true joy of life. Honestly though… you’re amazing. You weren’t afraid in the slightest. Maybe it’s only natural after all the nightmares you’ve been through…”
: “H-Hi there…”
: “U-Um, not yet…”
: The Zero wasn’t a stealth fighter though. Stealth technology didn’t really exist in World War II.
: “Akiyama-kun…”
: “Um, ‘before’? I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
: “Huh…?”
: “It looks like Akiyama-kun’s gonna be just fine. He’s a pretty strong-willed guy. And… I really have changed, huh? Do you think maybe now I’m starting to be like the Phantom Thieves…?”
: “I’m gonna work even harder now to make sure I live up to your legacy!”
: “You know, I always used to think I couldn’t amount to anything. But I somehow managed to step up and help Akiyama-kun with those thugs. It made me realize… there really are things I can do to save people.”
: “That’s why I’ve started writing a documentary on the Phantom Thieves. The research I did on that gang Akiyama-kun was wrapped up in was actually what pushed me to do it.”
: “And now I’m basically putting together a massive log of all your activities from the Phan-Site.”
: Clearly, Mishima has learned nothing.
: “Oh, don’t worry! I’m coming up with aliases for all of you. If you guys have code names you use, those would work too. At any rate, we should celebrate today! My treat!”
: “Screw the fountain drinks… let’s go straight for the fancy fruit juice! It’s three times the price, so it’s gotta be three times better!”
: “Fancy fruit juice”, aka “Let’s order wine with a fake ID”.
: “But I only have so much money… if you wanna order anything else, it’ll have to come out of your own pocket, okay? Anyway… let’s party until we have to go catch the last train!”
: Yes, partying until the last train with ‘juice’. Got it.
: “Uh… sorry. I don’t know the right thing to say after coming home from a party. Ahaha… but that was so fun, right? I’ve never stayed that late at a diner before.”
: “You think it’s the power of that fancy fruit juice? I mean, it did cost three times the usual price! …Okay, I’ll stop joking around. I think I’m just really happy to hear that one comment from Akiyama-kun…”
: “You heard what he said about me… but do you really think some part of me’s changed?”
: “Wait, really? You mean… I actually look confident now? Eheh… gosh, man, you’re gonna make me blush… but thank you.”
: “…That documentary I mentioned? Starting today, I’m going to start writing it seriously. And once it’s finished, I want you to be the first one to read the script! It’s our promise! A vow between men, okay? See you!”
: Next time, we’ll go to court to see an unfitting visual metaphor and then finish off the casino.