Colors Flying High - Let's Play Persona 5 Royal

timrodresized: Here’s the More Like Yusu-Gay piece for the school festival… which also doubles as the final shot of the Showtime attack Joker and Yusuke have together.

timrodresized: This is, of course, by Salty Vanilla.

Click Here for Update 80

timrodresized: We start off today by going to the arcade in Akihabara to start the process of getting Shinya’s Mementos request… but first, there’s a new thing we can get from the crane game.

timrodresized: I could’ve sworn Lexy was from something, but I guess not. This is another thing we can put on top of Joker’s work desk.

Shinya: “But my mom told them that it was the kid’s own fault for having his money taken… she just told them to leave without hearing what they had to say. Something’s wrong… with my mom.”

Shinya: “The other day she called my school to complain that the cost of lunch is too high. I begged her not to do it, but she said it’s for my own good… I doubt it was really 'cause of me though.”

timrodresized: She was actually complaining that they gave him lunch at all, because the only thing he should be eating is the weak.

Shinya: “Once everyone finds out, I’m gonna get made fun of again… but… she told me that once you stop fighting, you lose. And that those who complain, win.”

timrodresized: Or she’s just a super-Karen.

Shinya: “My mom was never like this before… she never used to care about stuff like winning or losing…”

Shinya: “Wh-what?”

Shinya: “S-Stop it…!”

timrodresized: Joker: “Uh… get a coffee without calling the police?”

Shinya: “M-Mom! Kurusu-san is…”

Shinya: “Stop it… Mom…”

Shinya: “But…”

Shinya: “…Y-Yes.”

Shinya: “I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry about earlier!”

Shinya: “Ugh… already!? Crap, I gotta go… I don’t like the person my mom’s turned into. She won’t listen to anything I say…”

Shinya: “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about today… um, do you think the Phantom Thieves can turn my mom back into her old self…?”

Shinya: “Please tell the Phantom Thieves… to change my mom back… to the way she used to be…”

timrodresized: I like this specific part of this scene, because like that optional scene, it’s got Shinya breaking character.

Shinya: “Her name? It’s Hanae… Hanae Oda… I gotta go. Let’s play again sometime. Um, and please don’t hate me…”

timrodresized: Strangely, even though we know what his request is, we don’t actually get it from this event. Shinya is great in that we don’t need to waste a night solely to get his request: instead, we get it during his Rank 8 event.

Ryuji: “And we’re gonna do it by changin’ his mom’s heart? …I bet that was a real tough decision to make.”

Ann: “I mean, he’s only in elementary school, right? This is a lot for a little kid to be dealing with…”

Makoto: “You’re right… we should try to help him as soon as possible. As for the calling card, let’s have him deliver it himself.”

Morgana: “So I guess this counts as a unanimous decision?”

timrodresized: Joker’s room is going to start filling up with stuff pretty fast from this point onward.

Sojiro: “…You’re not to blame. I’ll chase out anyone who says otherwise.”

Sojiro: “Thanks. I’m letting you handle today’s curry.”

Futaba: “N-No… we didn’t make it… Uncle sent his report to the police before we could make him have a change of heart…!”

Sojiro: “…Fine by me. I’ve got nothing to hide. Please, take a seat.”

Sojiro: “It’s true that Futaba was living as a shut-in, but she overcame that weakness under her own power. And… I would never abuse her. She’s like a daughter to me.”

Futaba: “You’re wrong…!”

Sojiro: “The kid never laid a finger on that guy. He just stood in the way to try and protect Futaba.”

Sojiro: “Well… there you have it.”

Futaba: “I… I’m okay. I couldn’t go out for a while… but everyone helped me get better. I’m not afraid anymore. Th-that’s why… I’m really happy living with my d-dad!”

timrodresized: While I was writing this, I found out that the person working on the fan translation for Eternal Punishment PSP has released a new video. There is progress being made on it.

timrodresized: Atlus also made a number of announcements about Persona as a series, including a possible tease of Persona 6 or a PS5 version of Persona 5.

timrodresized: Interestingly, this included new official artwork of both Jihei and Tatsuya, which has not been done in… some time.

timrodresized: Let’s be real here, it’s going to be some merch and a couple of drama CDs or other shit that will never be released in the US. My hopes are currently on the fan translation of Eternal Punishment.

Sojiro: “It’s not just her, idiot. There’s another pretty important person living here too.”

Futaba: “Yeah, yeah! He’s talking about you, Akira!”

Sojiro: sniff “This is 'cause you punks just had to go and say all that cheesy stuff…”

Futaba: “It wasn’t cheesy! It was the truth! Anyways, I hungerrr! Gimme some curry!”

Sojiro: “Heh, so much for the sentimental moment. All right, sit your butts down. This is where you two belong.”

Futaba: “Mweheh! C’mon, Akira! It’s time to eat!”

timrodresized: Unlike the confidants that have romance routes, I’m not going to do Sojiro’s Rank 10 immediately. I could have because we have a free night coming up due to finishing Yoshida early… but we’re going to use that to finish Chihaya instead.

timrodresized: The reason for this is that Chihaya doesn’t have a lot of nights where you can do her Rank 9 and Rank 10 in close proximity, and we’re coming up on one of the last chances to do that.

timrodresized: The other reason is that while Chihaya does have a unique non-rankup scene we haven’t seen, it doesn’t happen until after she’s hit Rank 10.

Sojiro: “Oh, and uh… Futaba. What you said before… when you called me your dad… do you, um, think you could say that again?”

Futaba: “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. My stomach was too grumbly! What’d you say?”

Sojiro: “I just wanted to talk. It’s hard to say some things right in front of Futaba… so… she called me ‘dad.’ Hell of a title. Not one I thought I’d ever get, but…”

Sojiro: “It’s kinda nice having someone to sit and eat with. Especially when she’s such a big fan of my cooking. God, I’m a joke. Getting all sentimental like this? At my age?”

Sojiro: “She really did. I’ve never seen her that confident in front of a total stranger… whoa, it’s pretty late already. Sorry to make you listen through all that.”

Sojiro: “Still, I guess there’s nothing wrong with a little sappiness now than then. Even from an old grump like me. Alright, I’m gonna head to sleep. Don’t catch a cold, okay? See you.”

timrodresized: We get a reminder from Haru about the palace, but I’m not going to bother showing it.

Chouno: “The Phantom Thieves should target somewhere bigger, more global - not this tiny island country. Like… oh, I don’t know, the casino city of Las Vegas or something.”

Chouno: “It was like a dream when I went there… hehe, I might not look it, but I’m good at card games.”

timrodresized: This is how you know she’s never been to Vegas. When I went, I had trouble finding anything that used actual cards - most of it is slots and electronic versions of card games.

Chouno: “The four suits of cards all symbolize something. By the way, Mr. Kurusu. Look at this.”

Chouno: “Excellent! The spade is a sword. Almost looks like one if you squint, right? And the heart is the Holy Grail. The heart was originally drawn as a cup.”

Chouno: “However, there are cards that belong to no class. In other words, they have no suit. The only card without a suit is the joker.”

timrodresized: Why would you say ‘cards’ plural when there’s only one?

Chouno: “Some theories say it originates from the Fool in tarot decks, but no one knows where it really came from. However, both are trump cards that can bring about unexpected effects. How you use them is critical.”

Morgana: “You heard her, Joker. Pretty good name, if I do say so myself. I kinda wish I’d given myself a cooler name.”

Shinya: ‘Hanae Oda’… my mom!? The Phantom Thieves are targeting my mom…? So she IS bad after all…"

Shinya: “Thanks… but my mom just isn’t herself. She used to be so nice… mom… do you think they’ll actually be able to change her heart?”

Shinya: “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. They ARE the Phantom Thieves, after all! So… someone has to give this to my mom, right? …Okay, I’ll do it.”

Shinya: “I… It IS kind of my fault… that my mom got this way… she had to deal with a lot, raising me on her own… she had to get stronger, 'cause I was so weak… but that’s not an excuse to hurt the people around her…!”

Shinya: “She fights with everyone, about everything, and ends up getting hurt… at this rate, my mom’s gonna break… I want my mom to realize that she doesn’t have to be strong for me anymore.”

Shinya: “But she won’t listen to me when I tell her that… that’s why I wanna help the Phantom Thieves. I wanna stop my mom.”

Shinya: “Kurusu-san… okay, I’ll give her the calling card. She’s my mom, after all. I really want to help her! The next time you see the Phantom Thieves, please tell them I said thank you.”

Shinya: “And thanks for talking to them about this, Kurusu-san. I’m going to teach you my best, strongest move…”

timrodresized: The bad news is that Bullet Hail actually does meaningful damage now, and if we get one that makes it harder to reach a negotiation. The good news is that we won’t need to negotiate anymore.

Shinya: “Hey, do me a favor… don’t tell anyone you saw me crying earlier, okay? Oh, and say hi to the Phantom Thieves for me. Later.”

timrodresized: Before we move on to the next scene with Akechi, we have a crossword puzzle to do.

timrodresized: Just like Akechi’s Rank 7, his Rank 8 also has a permafuck in it. This event will also kind of spoil who the killer is and also make the plot make a lot less sense. This scene is also why I chose to include the blurred cutscenes as they happen.

Akechi: “Do you have some time? I want to talk to you about something… it’d be best if we went somewhere where there aren’t many people around. How about, let’s say, Mementos? …Nobody can get in our way there.”

Morgana: “He wants the two of you to go to Mementos alone? Well, you guys are strong enough that you should be fine, but… be ready for anything, I guess.”

timrodresized: Before you go in, you’re going to want a Persona that is not weak to Bless or Curse.

timrodresized: This scene feels like it was supposed to happen at some point after the casino but before the part where Joker gets caught, but instead it happens here. No, really, it has to be done before you finish Sae’s palace.

timrodresized: But yeah, if it wasn’t obvious enough, this scene makes it clear that Akechi is the killer. The thing is, no one in the party knows this for sure yet - so this will make a lot of scenes later on seem stupid.

timrodresized: It creates this void where Joker knows Akechi’s true identity this early… but just doesn’t tell anyone or take any kind of action on it.

Crow: "Remember what I told you? If you ever won against me using my right hand, I’d take you on with everything I’ve got.

Crow: “That wasn’t enough to satisfy me… it’s your own fault, though. Your insight allowing you to determine my dominant hand, your quick wit, and most of all, how fast you’ve grown…”

Crow: “You’ve exceeded my expectations in every way. Thus, I’ve built up this urge to duel you without holding anything back.”

timrodresized: There’s also the question of “If Akechi has a real gun, why doesn’t he just use it?”

Crow: “Thank you for indulging my selfish request. No need for pleasantries at this point, correct?”

timrodresized: We couldn’t really see it earlier, but Akechi’s choice of melee weapon is a toy lightsaber. His usual gun is a toy laser pistol. The answer to “Why do these things work when they’re clearly toys” is “Because Akechi is badly written”.

timrodresized: In fact, that’s going to be the answer to a lot of things involving Akechi.

timrodresized: Akechi uses all the skills we’ve seen him with: Megaton Raid (single-target physical), Megidola, Eiga and Kouga.

timrodresized: I have Baal use Ayamur. It does something like 1500 damage and nearly ends this fight in one go.

timrodresized: At low HP, Akechi switches to Megidola… which still barely registers damage. Joker is pretty overpowered right now.

timrodresized: This only does 103 damage because the fight is scripted to end when Akechi reaches a certain HP threshold.

Crow: “You’ve caught up to me on this front already, too…”

Crow: “Of course not… but if we go any further, we’d both go beyond the point of no return, wouldn’t we? In all honestly, I’d love to see just how far we can go…”

timrodresized: Joker: “Look, I have a boyfriend.”

Crow: “But we have an important mission coming up. Until that’s finished, you’re a vital ally to me. …We’re done here. Let’s go.”

Akechi: “In all honesty, it’s to the point that I’d be relying on you in a pinch.”

Akechi: “Is that so? Well, that would please me greatly. I’m sorry I asked you to indulge me, but I do feel a bit better now.”

Akechi: “By the way, about that duel - if we had fought to the end, do you see yourself winning?”

timrodresized: I mean, we would’ve killed him had the game not scripted the fight to end. He’s just lucky we haven’t gone to Mementos yet. Seriously, that update’s going to be some shit.

Akechi: “I had a feeling you’d say that.”

timrodresized: Oh wow, Akechi knows how I feel about this game’s writing and Hashino. Oh, and my feelings about YIIK.

Akechi: “Your deft handling of your unfortunate circumstances, your uniqueness, your ability to surpass me - all these irritate me. …You’re the one person I refuse to lose to.”

Akechi: “Without a doubt. Even I was unaware that it was this severe. I’ll let you have this win today - but next time, I will be victorious. Let this be my proof.”

Akechi: “There’s a tradition in the West to throw one’s glove at their opponent when demanding a duel. Should the opponent accept the glove, the duel is also accepted.”

timrodresized: How is there not an equivalent of that in Japan?

timrodresized: This is the other permafuck in Akechi’s confidant. If you don’t accept the duel, you get locked out of content.

Akechi: “Make certain that you never forget: I am the one who will defeat you. Ah, look at the time. Let’s call it a day for now.”

timrodresized: We have a reading slot on the train, but we don’t have anything worth reading… except Jun’s book. I refuse to believe he didn’t write this.

timrodresized: We then get a second reading period. Oh well, let’s read about a pope that doesn’t exist. We’ve had that book for months now.

Morgana: “A legendary female pope, huh? Do you think she really existed?”

timrodresized: We’ve been over this, Morgana.

Morgana: “So, you’ve finished reading The Illusory Popess. Maybe the people of that era made up this mysterious female pope, but she’s still an inspirational figure.”

Morgana: “Pope Johanna, loved by so many… reading about her must have taught you the value of forgiveness…”

timrodresized: The after-school period is spent doing Makoto’s Rank 10, which we’ve already seen. We’ll just go right to doing Mishima’s Rank 8.

Mishima: “Let’s go somewhere close then!”

Mishima: “Sorry, one sec. That was from Akiyama-kun. He said he wants me to stop by. Apparently he’s pretty close. It sounded serious… I don’t think we should ignore him. Can you come with me?”

Mishima: “F-Friends?”

timrodresized: Oh look, it’s another scene straight out of Yakuza. Hooray.

timrodresized: Seriously though this is the most cliched yakuza bullshit there is. I don’t think you can have a yakuza story (Way of the House Husband doesn’t count) without this exact scene.

Mishima: “A-Akiyama-kun…”

Mishima: “Kurusu…run.”

Mishima: “A-Are you sure? I don’t want to get you involved… though having you here is definitely reassuring. …I think I have an idea. It’s risky, but it might just work.”

Mishima: “If anything happens to me, take care of Akiyama-kun, Kurusu.”

Mishima: “C-Crap, I bit my tongue…”

Mishima: “U-U-Ummm… you’d better lay off Akiyama-kun! I’ve been taking a video of this whole conversation!”

Mishima: “If you do anything to Akiyama-kun or his girlfriend, I’ll bring it straight to the police! Oh, and don’t get any ideas about breaking my phone. It backs up to the cloud automatically.”

timrodresized: That line doesn’t work when this is a fucking anime game!

Mishima: “Urgh…”

Mishima: “Kurusu… you’re right.”

Mishima: “Look, I know you guys are supposed to be tough and all… but are you sure it’s really worth getting arrested again over something like this? I mean, this video is definitely enough to get you guys busted given your previous criminal records.”

Mishima: “It doesn’t matter how. Just leave Akiyama-kun alone and we’ll be even! Then if you keep your word, I’ll delete the video. The backup too.”

Mishima: “N-No!”

timrodresized: Mishima is going to cry. Then they’ll be sorry.

Mishima: “My whole act would’ve broken down if they didn’t back off when they did. Hahaha… I really suck, huh?”

Mishima: “Yup, the whole thing. The truth is, I’ve dealt with enough bullying to know guys like that have probably been arrested at least once. Oh, and… thanks for sticking by me, Kurusu. We can’t let injustice like that go unchecked.”

Mishima: “I think I get it now… this feeling is what made me want to help you guys to begin with. That’s why I started the Phan-Site… to make sure nobody has to go through stuff like this again!”

timrodresized: I like that Mishima makes a turnaround in the last part of his arc, but I feel like it’s too late.

Mishima: “Huh?”

Mishima: “S-Sorry. It looked like you were really in trouble though… so I stepped up.”

Mishima: “Anyway, can you walk? Do you need us to call an ambulance?”

Mishima: “All right. Come on, Kurusu…”

Mishima: “Th-The panic is finally kicking in… I’m shaking so bad - I need to talk to someone… h-hey, you think I’ll be okay!? What if those guys secretly followed me home!?”

timrodresized: Why. Just why. Why did this phone call need to be here? Mishima gets some actual character development but nope, can’t have that.

Mishima: “Oh! B-But I have the model gun I got for self-defense! And my security system’s top of the line! So I’m safe, right?”

Mishima: “Wh-where does all that confidence come from…? Oh, but… I do feel a little calmer, now that I got to talk to you about it. Anyways… ugh. I’m so exhausted.”

Mishima: “I wish I could just crash, but I’ve gotta do some research on these guys… ugh, and I have to mod the Phan-Site too! it’s looking like another all-nighter…”

Mishima: “Hahaha… thanks for listening through all that, though. Okay, see you…”

timrodresized: This event is one of the harder ones to get, unless you know it exists. It requires that Ohya be at or under Rank 8, or on Rank 9 but with no additional points on the romance route.

timrodresized: For reference, her Mementos request takes place in the part of Mementos representing Futaba’s palace, meaning we could have done it months ago. Most people going for 100% do.

Morgana: “A festival, huh? I want to eat some takoyaki. I can’t wait until tomorrow!”

timrodresized: If you don’t know what a kumade is (I sure didn’t) they’re bamboo rakes that are decorated with different things to represent good fortune. You can see one on the banner above Haru’s head.

timrodresized: The festival in Asakusa is also a real thing - it happens every year in November and is a major tourist draw.

Haru: “Thank you for helping me out. …And, sorry.”

Haru: “Oh, I’m glad to hear. This festival is really bustling with people, huh? It’s nice. Anyway, wasn’t the kumade heavy? Father always bought huge, elaborate ones for good fortune. They even reported it on TV.”

Haru: “We can’t… get a new one for this year though. I’m thinking of buying one for the Phantom Thieves instead. If we set that up in the hideout, I feel like something good will happen.”

Ohya: “And with that Prince Boring I’ve seen so many times before, no less! I think this means we will need an interview!”

timrodresized: If this seems completely out of character for Ohya, that’s because it kinda is.

Ohya: “Oh, how chivalrous! She your girlfriend?”

Haru: “Are you… an acquaintance of his? What’s this about an interview?”

Ohya: “I’ve interviewed him before. I would have thought a high-class lady like yourself would be out of his league.”

Ohya: “Hmm, I see… well, it seems like I’m intruding, so I’ll get out of your way, hmm? Be wary of the mass media! …Especially when it comes to men.”

Haru: “Oh, um… okay…”

Ohya: “I sure hope so.”

Haru: “Um… that was an interesting acquaintance. Ah, so she cooperated with you too… Maybe I should have asked her to take a photo of us as a memento. Well, let’s regroup and buy that kumade.”

Haru: “Well, then… please put this up in the hideout.”

timrodresized: Let’s go put the kumade up.

timrodresized: I didn’t even think about this when I was recording, but of course they went with a visual pun. It’s a “kuma”-de.

Morgana: “Apparently, rakes bring good luck to businesses. Maybe Leblanc will serve fancier food if they make more money…”

timrodresized: Just one more thing left before we go into Mementos, that being to do Chihaya’s Rank 9 and 10.

Chihaya: “They didn’t really believe what I was saying at first, but the truth of the matter settled in eventually… however… it seems like the members from the executive class are still brainwashed.”

Chihaya: “I’m in talks with a lawyer right now though. We’re going to get refunds and outpatient care for all of them. I’m going to give back all the money I made from selling Holy Stones too.”

timrodresized: Wait… does that mean…

Chihaya: “It’s the least I can do to atone for the ignorance I showed back then. That’s why… I want you to accept this, Kurusu-san. Think of it not only as an apology, but as a sign of gratitude, for helping me see the truth.”

timrodresized: We got our money back! Not that it’s going to matter much, because we’ll hit a new record for cash on hand tomorrow.

Chihaya: “Yokoda-san!? What are you all doing here!?”

Chihaya: “N-None of it was made up… as for the chairman, I need you to listen to me. Everything he told you in those seminars was a lie! The promises of a great future, the power of the Holy Stones, the need for donations… all lies.”

Chihaya: “Doesn’t it seem strange that he kept asking members for money, even through times of financial stress? And beyond that, you guys should have known better than anyone where those ‘donations’ were ending up…”

Chihaya: “…Even I knew how horrible the ADP’s scheme was. That’s why I had to come forward…”

Chihaya: “Please, stop this! He has nothing to do with your situation! I’m the one who sold you those rocks! If you’re going to get upset with anyone… it should be me!”

Chihaya: “L-Look, the only way you can change that is with your convictions! Neither I nor one of those worthless stones will be able to help you…”

timrodresized: I play with Japanese voices on, but I imagine that in English she sounds like Sandy from Spongebob. Don’t ask me why I think that, it’s just the first thing that comes to mind.

Chihaya: “Whether yer gonna be miserable or not’s all on yer own damn shoulders! You don’t need some divine power mumbo jumbo to be changin’ yer fate!”

Chihaya: “Y’all got that strength in yourselves! Fortune tellin’ can’t hold a candle to honest-to-goodness willpower! And heck, even if things’re bad now, it’ll all be fine so long as you keep yer heads up!”

Chihaya: “O-Oh, I’m sorry about that. All this stress caused me to lapse into my country dialect… but… I stand by what I said. Nothing will ever change if all you do is rely on orders.”

Chihaya: “Take me for example. I thought I was destined to live as a monster… but I had the strength to reverse that fate. If you want to control your future, that’s all you need… strength.”

Chihaya: “The only way forward is through the fortitude of your own heart!”

Chihaya: “It might not be the easiest to accomplish at first. After all, your willpower has been constantly suppressed by all those seminars and donations… I’m partially to blame for that.”

Chihaya: “But that’s why I need to show you the light now and help you push on!”

Chihaya: “No. I’m not your Maiden anymore. I’m just Chihaya Mifune, the fortune teller that guides fate!”

Chihaya: “I know how they feel though. They want to cling onto the Holy Stones, just as I clung to my role as the Maiden. All any of us ever wanted was to be happy… to avoid our fates…”

timrodresized: If you took this last line out of context, it could easily be Chihaya talking about a different JRPG altogether.

Chihaya: “Right. I did it, so I’m sure Yokoda-san and the others will be able to as well! No matter how many times I have to try, I will talk to them until they understand.”

Chihaya: “And when they realize the difficult truth… I will be there to help them recover. Back in my village, people called me a monster. Here, they revered me as the Maiden.”

Chihaya: “Even now my heart continues to wander, yet you somehow saw the real me. Not the Maiden… not a monster… just Chihaya. Kurusu-san… thank you.”

timrodresized: Joker’s like “What? Me? Even though I’m the equivalent of one of those old ladies that browse local Facebook groups just to be able to gossip more efficiently?”

Chihaya: “I mean, normally someone wouldn’t think to involve themselves in such a strenuous ordeal. S-So, um… there’s actually something I’ve been wondering for a while now…”

Chihaya: “Is… fortune telling the only reason you come to see me? I-It’s not… is it?”

Chihaya: “Kurusu-san… why do you come here?”

timrodresized: Well, there was the extra social stat points… the the extra confidant points… and then the money readings, and now we can make alarms at will. I’m not kidding when I say in the next update, we go through like 14 alarms to get all the stuff I wanted.

Chihaya: “O-Oh, I see… sorry, I suppose I was just feeling a bit self-conscious… But there’s nothing better than knowing my readings help others! Please come have your fortune read as often as you’d like!”

Chihaya: “After all, we’ll forever be joined in our quest to oppose fate! Anyway, I should be going. Good night!”

Chihaya: “There’s something I really wanted to tell you…”

timrodresized: Yep, looks like a quality proofreading job on the Royal script.

Chihaya: “I plan on doing all I can to support everyone at the ADP for a while. If you’re in any trouble, please feel free for a consultation any time!”

timrodresized: Did the Allansons proofread this part? That’s a 2x typo combo the likes of which I have not seen since the Two Brothers LP.

Chihaya: “Great! Please, I want to help you carve a path to your future! As Chihaya Mifune. Fortune teller and emissary of fate!”

timrodresized: They really rushed this one out the door, didn’t they?

Chihaya: “…Whoops! I guess I sounded a little too full of myself just then. Maybe I’m not a monster or a maiden. I’m just Chihaya. So if you’re ever in trouble, remember you can always come to me. Okay?”

Chihaya: “Well, good night and sweet dreams…”

timrodresized: Anyway, let’s get her Rank 10 done while we’re at it.

Chihaya: “I do a phone consultation with them from time to time, and they’re all very cheerful… that goes for my fortune teller customers as well.”

Chihaya: " I’ve been getting thanked a lot more lately. Even by the people who get bad fortunes! Particularly when I tell them they can alter their fate!"

Chihaya: “That’s very true… all I used to say before was that they were going to face misfortune. I had a best friend in the town I used to live in… she was the first person I read a fortune for.”

timrodresized: So wait, hold on a second, back up. You started telling people the equivalent of “everything I just said is bullshit” and they like you more?

Chihaya: “When she started avoiding me, I read the fortune of our fate. It was a terrible result, but I prayed that it would somehow work out. However… that never happened. That’s when I started to believe that fate couldn’t be changed.”

Chihaya: “No surprise though, right? Because I didn’t take action on my part to try and change it. I haven’t talked to her in years… maybe I’ll try contacting her sometime.”

Chihaya: “Yeah, you’re right! …Oh, could this be!?”

Chihaya: “The power of conviction is amazing. Her fate and mine are connected! I will no longer be swayed… by names like Monster or Maiden… I am simply a fortune teller who provides advice to people with broken spirits.”

timrodresized: Yeah, uh, you’ve said that like ten times already. Chihaya really feels like Hashino had maybe half a confidant written, got to release and went “Fuck it, just start copy-pasting. No one’s gonna know.”

Chihaya: “So that they will have conviction and face their future without getting pushed around by fate. …That’s the fate I’ve chosen for myself.”

Chihaya: giggle “Thank you. Now, it’s your turn to speak. What would your conviction be… as a phantom thief? Sorry, I used fortune telling to find out your identity.”

timrodresized: This is the one bit I like of this confidant rank. She’s such a dumbass that she didn’t get the hint when Joker asked her for the chairman’s name - she just did a fucking tarot reading.

Chihaya: “I couldn’t help but think that you had something to do with the chairman’s confession. Then I discovered that you’re the Trickster who causes a sensation in the world.”

Chihaya: “It was the same card as the figure who helped me take down the chairman. giggle It finally struck home for me…!”

timrodresized: I remembered not liking Chihaya’s confidant in the base game, and now I’m remembering why.

Chihaya: “Well, you may interpret the cards however you like… but I don’t care what your true identity is. As long as you’re around… I can always be my true self. So it’s fine.”

Chihaya: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

Chihaya: “I’m sorry. I really can’t read this sequence. However… I’ll be by your side! As the fortune teller who changes fates, I will guide you so that you can avoid misfortune!”

Music The Path Is Open

timrodresized: Lakshmi is the lowest-level Persona that requires a maxed confidant to fuse. I want to log her at the end of this update because I want you to see how bad she is compared to non-ultimates like Mara or Baal.

Chihaya: “Still, what a strange sequence the cards were in when I read the fortune about your true identity. Several cards with strong personalities gathered around the Trickster.”

Chihaya: “It’s quite improbable… it was almost as if it were trying to connect them together. You either have amazing charisma, or you’re a trouble magnet.”

Chihaya: “The verification tests are over, but don’t forget about me, okay?”

timrodresized: Okay, let’s do that log quick. Next time, we’ll pay Caroline and Justine gobs of money to break the game, fuse ultimate guns for half the party, and make it so Ann can win encounters by herself.

New Persona: Lakshmi

Origin: India

First Appearance: Megami Tensei I

timrodresized: Lakshmi is… trash. She doesn’t learn Diamond Dust (the fourth-tier ice spell) and Climate Decorum is a waste of a skill slot. Sure, she learns Life Aid - which is great in the base game where you don’t have those special fusion accidents… except Trumpeter learns it and is not an ultimate.

I’ve gotten some minor P5 spoilers when browsing the wiki, so I think I know why this fact is worded the way it is, but it’s still a translation error. The Japanese word must be seihai, which can mean either the Holy Grail or a communion chalice. If the four suits represent the classes of old European society, then the clergy (not ‘saints’ like in the picture) would be represented by a chalice – because as everyone knows, the Holy Grail is in Japan. (Also, Wikipedia makes no mention of the four suits representing social classes or anything at all for that matter, but I’ve heard it before and it sounds real.)

Incidentally, while I was thinking about this, I realized that if the Heart is a chalice then the four playing card suits are the same as the four tarot suits: Hearts (Cups), Spades (Swords), Diamonds (Coins), Clubs (Wands). It turns out this isn’t a coincidence: according to Wikipedia, all playing card suits have the same source–they’re all ultimately derived from old Chinese game suits.

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Click Here for Update 81

timrodresized: This is the final Mementos request we can do on this run, and is also why we waited this long to go in.

Morgana: “Wow, this is some good info, even for Mishima!”

timrodresized: Before we go in, we’re getting a money reading. This will pay for itself when we get to that one boss we couldn’t kill last time - the invincible hacker one.

timrodresized: We also get a Celestial Reading, which costs 20,000 yen. It is worth every single one. If you have one of these up, you will have an alarm any time you want one, and we’ll need a bunch.

timrodresized: The area that represents Okumura’s palace is now open, and let me tell you, it’s a pain in the ass if you want to get all the stamps.

Morgana: “It looks like Mementos has expanded even further…”

Fox: “Hm? I thought public opinion of us determined Mementos expansion… and that has plummeted lately.”

timrodresized: Yusuke just pointing out those plot holes.

Morgana: “Our notability must still be on the rise, even if it’s because of our currently bad reputation…”

Panther: “So we’re like a celeb who gets more famous because of scandals? I don’t like the sound of that…”

Morgana: “Either way, the further we go, the more powerful enemies we’ll meet. We need to be cautious in here. Let’s go see where the change has occurred, Joker!”

timrodresized: We’ll get there… eventually. The game kind of assumes that we’ve done a couple of Mementos requests way earlier than we actually have.

timrodresized: We also have an alarm waiting for us, so let’s make the most of it.

Returning Persona: Odin

Origin: Norse Paganism

First Appearance: Megami Tensei I

All-Father of Norse mythology. Associated with… actually, pretty much every aspect of Norse culture. Traded his eye for knowledge from the Well of Mimir. Father of most of the Norse pantheon.

timrodresized: I believe this makes us three for three on fusing Odin. He’s just that good.

timrodresized: Odin learns both Thunder Reign (fourth-tier single target elec spell) and its multi-target equivalent, Wild Thunder. Bargain Bolts is his signature ability, which cuts the cost of elec spells by 75%.

timrodresized: Bargain Bolts can be passed down in fusion, which makes Odin just that much better. We do wind up replacing Gun Boost with Elec Boost later, but we have to itemize him first - so doing it now would be pointless.

timrodresized: I then itemize Baal into Haru’s ultimate gun, Yagrush EX. Most of the ultimate guns had their stats changed from the base game - in this case, Haru’s gun had its accuracy cut by ten or fifteen percent.

timrodresized: A lot of these stat changes were due to the ultimate guns having an upgraded version obtained during alarms.

Skull: “Somethin’ about this guy tells me he’s nuts. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Queen: “He’s threatening Iwai… he’s doing this because he’s getting desperate, right?”

Fox: “He seriously intends to kill someone. We’d better change his heart immediately.”

Panther: “It’s scary, but we gotta do it!”

timrodresized: We are going to kill Tsuda in one hit.

timrodresized: Here’s the important thing about Concentrate, at least as far as Joker is concerned. If you Concentrate with one Persona, you can switch Personas on Joker’s next turn and it’ll carry over.

timrodresized: Because Concentrate is typically going to be the last action of your turn, it’s best to have one Persona with it so the rest of your lineup saves a skill slot.

timrodresized: Tsuda wastes his turn casting Bufudyne on Yusuke, who is immune.

timrodresized: Just to make things easier, Futaba gives us a full-party Tarukaja. Using it in conjunction with Charge or Concentrate is really the best way to use Tarukaja.

timrodresized: Oh yeah. That’s 5 SP for Thunder Reign, thanks to Ann’s ability kicking in at the same time. This is how you’re meant to use the fourth-tier spells: there’s a 75% SP reduction skill for each element.

timrodresized: By the way, this was without Elec Boost.

timrodresized: No shit they do! You were trying to give them toy guns!

timrodresized: Give me a Yakuza spinoff where Kiryu is a college professor in yakuza studies. The final exam is performing the tiger drop.

timrodresized: I made a quick trip back to get Odin Elec Boost, and then went on to the next target.

Skull: “He looks so suspicious.”

Fox: “Well, he is obstructing a new investigation to keep some incident hidden under the rug.”

Queen: “People died in that incident. He should be ashamed to call himself a journalist.”

Panther: “We’ll have to make him see the truth!”

timrodresized: Honjo is another one of those minibosses where they took a regular enemy and shuffled its weaknesses around. In this case, he nulls Psychic.

timrodresized: That’s fine, because Odin can kill him in two hits. Supposedly, he’s weak to wind, but I didn’t bother to check.

timrodresized: You just know Hashino made them add the bit about the wife.

New Persona: Uriel

Origin: The Bible

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

One of the four named major archangels in the Bible who represent the cardinal directions. Name means “Flame of God”, as he is usually seen carrying a flaming sword. Guardian of the gates of Eden.

timrodresized: We have another alarm, so let’s use it. Uriel is a component of Michael, who is a component of Lucifer and also a component for Metatron.

timrodresized: He’s also our first source of Megidolaon, which isn’t as great as it could be with Almighty Boost and Almighty Amp, but is still pretty okay. More notable is that he has Spell Master to pass down.

timrodresized: I then itemize Odin into Gungnir, Ann’s best gun. I’ve talked about this before - it can end encounters in one attack, which we’ll see later.

New Persona: Raphael

Origin: Judeo-Christian Mythology

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

One of the four named archangels. Does not appear in the Bible by name, but performs several miracle healings in various stories in it. Name means “It is God that heals”. Responsible for signalling Judgement Day by blowing a trumpet.

timrodresized: Raphael is a pure physical Persona, and so I built to his strengths. He has Charge, Heat Riser, and Arms Master, which is Spell Master but for physical and gun skills.

timrodresized: I then itemize Uriel into Providence, which is Yusuke’s best gun. Unlike Ann and Haru’s guns, his is a stat stick that increases his Agility. I believe this makes him the fastest non-Joker party member.

Panther: “All right! We have a plan this time!”

timrodresized: I’m going to skip most of the dialogue here, because it’s just the demon going “haha I’m cheating” again.

Skull: “Joker, you’ve got a plan, right? I’m countin’ on you! We’ll get 'em this time!”

timrodresized: This fight is a tutorial on how to use Down Shot.

timrodresized: Down Shot is Joker-specific, and is done through his gun menu. Remember, we can only do this three times per dungeon.

timrodresized: We finished that fight in one turn (thus getting double money from Hifumi’s ability) and with an All-Out (thus getting double money from Chihaya) on top of the 180% stamp bonus.

Morgana: “Don’t do this again! You better make amends for the wrong you’ve done!”

Panther: “I get chills just looking at him.”

Fox: “He’s an ex-mercenary who is now a professional assassin. He’s no ordinary person.”

Noir: “If even the police can’t handle him, then it’s up to us to take care of him.”

Morgana: “Let’s approach him with caution.”

Skull: “We can’t just let someone dangerous like you go around, killin’ people.”

timrodresized: Why is this guy the only person to ever question what the party is doing?

Panther: “Evil? Don’t be ridiculous! We’re doing our best to do what’s right!”

timrodresized: I’m really, really surprised they let that last line through after how far Atlus went to defang shit in this game.

timrodresized: Kiritani has no weaknesses and a boatload of HP.

timrodresized: He also likes to use full-party physical attacks that do a shitload of damage.

timrodresized: Fortunately, Ann gets a burn off on him and Joker follows up with a technical.

timrodresized: Yusuke and Ann then decide to Showtime to finish it off.

Morgana: Sorry, but we’re not the same. The Phantom Thieves would never murder people.

Panther: “How can you say that after you murdered so many people!?”

Oracle: “You better accept that you lost already. Prepare yourself.”

Queen: “We’ll destroy evil in a way that’s different from yours. You can disappear without worry.”

timrodresized: This is the other way to get a High Counter skill card, if you haven’t already finished Caroline and Justine’s confidant.

Oracle: “Wow… this place is a lot bigger than what I’d heard.”

Morgana: “I expect the Shadows here will be strong, too. Be careful!”

timrodresized: In the base game (and to an extent, in Royal as well) this was pretty much how you learned what Haru’s personality was.

timrodresized: Adyeshach is where you should stop collecting stamps. There’s 30 of them, and you will need to grind to get them all - I spent something like two hours just reloading floors for stamps.

timrodresized: What I found out the hard way is that once you have your money maxed and have items at x7 or so, there’s not much of a point to stamps.

timrodresized: Going any further with items just means this will happen sooner. The cap for any one item is 99, any any further items of that type picked up are lost. Granted, this was after like four hours of grind.

timrodresized: Bullet Hail does damage now. Of course, so does Uriel.

timrodresized: Jose sells Nirvanas now. I probably should’ve picked a few of these up for Lucifer, since theoretically we can fuse him as early as about three weeks before the final dungeon of the base game.

timrodresized: By the end of the run, this is how the stamp bonuses looked. There’s not really any point to putting points into EXP, because money is just so much better.

timrodresized: This is Ann’s new gun in action. Despair locks down an enemy for three turns, draining their SP and killing them after the third turn. This is a great way to regenerate SP if you need to, since you can sit there and regen 7 HP a turn.

Queen: “Why are there so many parents who try to control their children?”

Skull: “Don’t overthink it. Let’s worry more about helpin’ their daughter.”

Panther: “We have to change their hearts if we want to save Futaba’s friend!”

Oracle: “L-Let’s go!”

Oracle: “You call yourselves parents!? Kana-chan’s suffering so much because of you!”

Oracle: “…I knew it. These two are rotten to the core! Joker, please save Kana-chan!”

timrodresized: I get Joker charged up, and then Haru actually manages to hit with her gun.

timrodresized: Sure, I could go for the Technical hit… but why bother? We’ve got Odin.

timrodresized: Haru then uses Triple Down, which is actually a really good gun skill even once you have One Shot Kill. The reason is that Triple Down will give you three Technical hits which are likely to hit for a higher amount, which plays nicely into her gun’s AOE shock.

Oracle: “You HAVE to! Don’t hurt Kana-chan ever again!”

Oracle: “Thank you, Joker. I think Kana-chan’s going to be alright now.”

timrodresized: At this point, there was a rest area, so I went back and used another alarm or two.

New Persona: King Frost

Origin: SMT Original (Probably)

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II

timrodresized: I needed King Frost to fuse one of the other archangels, who also happens to be the best one despite being the lowest level of them all.

New Persona: Gabriel

Origin: The Bible

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Archangel who serves at the left hand of God. Name means “God is my strength”. Scholars believe that Gabriel may be non-binary, as they generally have an androgynous appearance in early art. Appeared before Mary to announce the conception of Jesus, and also appeared before Muhammad to reveal his role as Islam’s prophet.

timrodresized: Gabriel is easily the best of the named archangels, simply because they’re one of the two Personas in the base game (and three in Royal, not counting DLC) to learn Ali Dance.

timrodresized: The description in the game states that it “Increases evasion against one opponent”, which is incorrect. What it actually does is sets your evasion at 50%, regardless of the number of enemies.

timrodresized: The only limitation on it is that Ali Dance (and evasion in general) does not work against status effects. Either way, this is an ability we’re going to want on everything.

timrodresized: I should mention that when you’re fusing the named archangels, you are going to want to pay attention to what skills you carry over, especially if you’re planning on fusing Lucifer.

timrodresized: With Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, we can fuse one of the two harder ingredients for Lucifer.

New Persona: Michael

Origin: The Bible

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Archangel who serves as the right hand of god. Name means “Who is like God?”, which has been interpreted as a symbol of humility. Field commander of the Army of God who leads it in the war against Lucifer.

timrodresized: Michael is kind of hamstrung right now by the fact that we don’t get an EXP bonus from Sae’s confidant. He learns his best skill at level 92, that being Cosmic Flare, the fourth-tier all-target Nuke spell.

timrodresized: Ordinarily, passing down Spell Master is a waste because Lucifer starts with it. Ali Dance is also not as good for Lucifer as a different defensive skill we’ll get on Sandalphon.

timrodresized: The reason I put those on Michael is so he can pass them down to Metatron, who is the best Bless Persona in the game. Metatron is another Lucifer ingredient, but I’ll probably keep him around just for bless damage.

timrodresized: On a side note, I’ll probably fuse a second Michael once we’ve maxed out Sojiro’s confidant and turn him into a Nuclear/Psychic hybrid caster type. This one is here just to pass down skills to Metatron.

timrodresized: By the way, fusing Michael is not cheap. Neither is summoning him from the compendium, which sucks, because…

timrodresized: Michael itemizes into Makoto’s best gun. +11 to all stats is an amazing bonus, and it’d be even better if it was on someone who isn’t Makoto.

New Persona: Black Frost

Origin: Atlus Original

First Appearance: Nocturne

Demon based on a pun involving the fact that the name “Jack” sounds like a Japanese word for “evil” or “wicked”.

image

timrodresized: Black Frost is a special fusion between Jack Frost, Pyro Jack, and King Frost. While he’s hardly a bad Persona, we can do much better.

timrodresized: The real reason we want Black Frost is because he itemizes into the best whip for Ann.

Queen: “It looks a little anxious.”

Fox: “I hear he’s been repeatedly changing his name and face with plastic surgery to escape debt.”

Panther: “The police will never catch him, so it’s up to us.”

Skull: “Yeah. Let’s go!”

Skull: “Hey, we’d never accept any help from a guy as bad as you.”

Queen: “You’d better return all the money you stole!”

timrodresized: So… wait, we’re fighting a guy because he’s embezzling money from banks? Why do we care again?

Fox: “I disagree. You’ve been running away, always hiding behind a new name and face.”

timrodresized: Even after fusing Gabriel, I was still using Odin… despite the fact that Gabriel had Odin’s entire moveset plus Ali Dance.

timrodresized: This entire dialog feels like that dub of School Ghost Stories. It feels like they asked an intern to write a sidequest and the intern went “You know what, fuck it.”

Panther: “So, you were saying the Phantom Thieves are hypocrites?”

Fox: “From now on, live your life with an open heart and nothing to hide.”

timrodresized: I had another alarm, and the final request is near the bottom of this area, so I did some last fusions before leaving. In hindsight, there’s one Persona I should have fused here, but I’ll do that in the casino.

New Persona: Pale Rider

Origin: The Bible

First Appearance: Nocturne

Death.

timrodresized: Pale Rider’s skills are a hodgepodge because we just need him to fuse Trumpeter, who is a component for Lucifer.

New Persona: Trumpeter

Origin: The Bible

First Appearance: Nocturne

Angel from the Book of Revelations that is said to sound seven trumpets to herald the end of the world.

timrodresized: In the mainline SMT games (well, Nocturne and 4/Apocalypse anyway) Trumpeter is one of the best obtainable demons. Here, he’s pretty mediocre. With him, we now have four of Lucifer’s six components - the other two being Satan and Metatron, who we can’t fuse yet.

timrodresized: Trumpeter gets us over the 50% mark for compendium completion.

timrodresized: No, Haru! Don’t encourage him! He’s horny for humans!

Queen: “She looks like she would bite us if we even tried to speak to her.”

Panther: “I heard she’s the definition of a helicopter parent. She’s really selfish too.”

timrodresized: Gotta love the values dissonance of “We have to stop this guy because he’s killing people!” becoming “We have to stop this lady because she’s kind of a bitch!”

Skull: “We gotta do somethin’ about this! Kids really look up to their parents, you know?”

timrodresized: Shadow Oda is a Dakini, an enemy we last saw in Persona 1. This was where I wished I had fused Asura, because Joker has no fire damage, and that’s what her weakness is.

timrodresized: Even with Debilitate and hitting a weakness, Ann is barely registering damage.

timrodresized: The fight is mostly Ann and Yusuke chipping away at her health… at least, until she starts putting people to sleep.

timrodresized: Once she gets enough people asleep, Oda follows up with Vorpal Blade, which hits extremely hard and will get Technical hits off people who are sleeping.

timrodresized: Shadow Oda is on Floor 11 of this area, which has a total of 13 floors. As I mentioned before, this area sucks to get all the stamps for. That’s because there’s a good chance each floor will only spawn one stamp pedestal (the fixed one) and Floor 10 doesn’t spawn any at all.

timrodresized: Futaba really has a thing for Ann’s outfit for some reason.

timrodresized: As I mentioned before, I spent two hours searching for stamps.

timrodresized: I honestly don’t know what possessed Atlus to go with this instead of having each floor spawn a fixed number of stamp pedestals so you can get them all in one run provided you fully explore each floor.

timrodresized: As we’ll see in the next update, this game has kind of a problem with scaling, in that it’s quite common for people to be high enough level that they can insta-kill the enemies in the casino.

timrodresized: Tonight, we get what is quite possibly the longest IM conversation in the game.

timrodresized: He’d know, wouldn’t he?

timrodresized: “I also think the killer is extremely handsome and smart, and I’m definitely not him despite me showing Joker that I own a silenced pistol.”

Morgana: “He’s right. If we get caught now, all our hard work will amount to nothing.”

timrodresized: We call Kawakami for a massage, and then go to Iwai and the clothing store in Kichijoji to sell clothes, raking in a total of nearly two million yen.

timrodresized: We have so many clothing points that I use a few to get new armor for everyone. Even though we have a shit-ton of money, I’m not going to buy anything new for the casino because we’ll have everyone’s ultimate weapons pretty soon.

Ohya: “He said he’s been concerned for my health… which is actually kinda creepy, now that I think about it. Anyway, that’s not all. He said he’s letting me re-open my investigation into what happened to Kayo!”

Ohya: “He told me he wants me to do everything I can to pursue the truth. I think… he was serious. I wonder what happened to make him change so suddenly…?”

Ohya: “…What, just out of the blue? The whole thing’s too convenient. It seems a little fishy, you know? I mean, you… asked me for the chief’s name the other day, right?”

Ohya: “Hmmm…”

Ohya: “I… I know where Kayo is. That was part of the chief’s apology to me. Apparently he did some investigating on his own. So, he followed up on my journalist friend’s source and… it turns out she really is alive after all.”

Ohya: “That explains why she hasn’t been able to contact me this whole time. I really wanna go see her, but to be honest… I’m afraid. I’m afraid to know the truth. Not just about Kayo’s current state… but about what happened to her that night too.”

timrodresized: You know, just in case someone has sent a bunch of Taiwanese mafia guys to kill her. Kayo being in a mental hospital in the countryside is taken straight from Eternal Punishment.

Ohya: “That’s really considerate of you, but the hospital she’s in is far out in the countryside. But… thank you. You give me the courage I need to do this.”

Ohya: “I’m… going to go see her. No matter what happens, I need to see this through to the end. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be Ichiko Ohya, journalist extraordinaire!”

Ohya: “I’m really glad I talked to you about this. I never would’ve made my mind up without your help. You know, you’re way more than just some high school kid. You’re almost like my guidance counselor.”

timrodresized: Oh, right. I just remembered about the final Devil Persona, and realized I forgot to explain something earlier.

timrodresized: You know how all the elements have fourth-tier spells? Bless and Curse do too… only they suck. They’re called Divine Judgment and Demonic Decree, and instead of doing damage they reduce an enemy’s HP by 50%. This counts as a weakness hit if the enemy is weak to it.

timrodresized: It sucks because in most cases, you’ll get more than 50% of an enemy’s HP in damage using an elemental spell (or hell, even Eigaon or Kougaon) and doesn’t work on bosses.

Ohya: “Oh, by the way… everything with the chief worked out okay, but the higher-ups are still keeping an eye on me. So I’ll need you to keep the juicy tidbits coming! I can’t stop writing about the Phantom Thieves now!”

Ohya: “…All right, let’s see what you have for me today!”

Ohya: “Thanks for pushing me… to go see Kayo. I’m a journalist. From now on, I’m always gonna chase the truth.”

Ohya: “Thanks. You really are a weird kid, you know that? Whenever I talk to you, I get this… heightened sense of duty, for some reason. I’ll come back with some awesome stories, so let’s meet up again.”

Ohya: “Okay, I’m gonna hang up. Gotta pack for my big trip. See ya!”

timrodresized: Next time, we’ll see what happens when the game stops railroading us, but also doesn’t provide for a non-linear level structure so you’re basically railroaded just with worse signposting. Link to the Past or Super Metroid this game is not.

I guess Joker’s just got a real “I’m John Persona The Phantom Thief” vibe considering every confidant seems to have realized what’s going on.

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Click Here for Update 82

Ushimaru: “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.”

Ushimaru: “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.”

Ushimaru: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

Ushimaru: “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.”

Ushimaru: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

Ushimaru: “I’d imagine in order to prove it, they’d have to catch them in the act. Hmmm…”

timrodresized: 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.

Tae: “Yes?”

Tae: “The hospital on the news?”

Tae: “…Wh-What’s going on?”

Tae: “I haven’t… seen it…”

Tae: “What? Um… it’s something that shouldn’t be allowed to happen… I guess.”

Tae: “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.”

Tae: “What…!? There’s… no way…”

Tae: “So she’s… she’s alive…”

Tae: “…Yes, of course! You’ll help me, right? I take back what I said. We’ll resume development right away.”

Tae: “We’re going to move quickly today, so you may experience some pain during the examination. …Sorry. Just hang in there, okay?”

Tae: “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.”

Tae: “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.”

Tae: “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.”

Tae: “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…”

timrodresized: I like a lot of these post-request cutscenes, and I wish more of the game was written like that.

timrodresized: We’ll also be seeing Iwai’s Rank 9 immediately after the casino.

Iwai: “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.”

Iwai: “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?”

timrodresized: Your friend is a total dumbass, so yeah probably.

Iwai: “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.”

Iwai: “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.”

Iwai: “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…”

timrodresized: Were the localizers trying to set a new record for number of vestigial apostrophes in a sentence?

Iwai: “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.”

Iwai: “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?”

timrodresized: 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.

Iwai: “Oh, and I’m not lettin’ you leave 'til they’re done.”

Iwai: “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.”

Iwai: “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…”

Iwai: “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.”

timrodresized: And now it’s casino time.

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “And for that, we will need to have a member’s card.”

Skull: “Where’re we gonna get one though? There’s not too many places we can go right now.”

Crow: “Hm… I doubt we will find one simply lying on the ground in the main hall. I suggest we head for the backroom.”

Morgana: “Huh…? But why?”

Crow: “I will explain later. In any case, let’s try to find an entrance.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Going through the vent puts us on the ledge where we first met Sae’s shadow earlier.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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%).

timrodresized: The human NPCs will comment on Joker’s appearance (and some other things) if you get close enough.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Now, let me show you why it’s so hard to get Akechi’s finisher screen.

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “Then let us check around. We may find something useful.”

Panther: “Like… what?”

Oracle: “Mwehehe… I get it. You mean some kinda customer data terminal.”

Crow: “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…”

Oracle: “That’s where I come in. Leave it all to me!”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: There’s a box about halfway through that you can climb to get to where the first will seed is.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: In the back rooms, we find a second kind of stealable.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Orlov is weak to curse, so we let Akechi handle it and then grab it for compendium purposes.

timrodresized: There’s another save room at the end of this area.

timrodresized: 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.

Skull: “That thing really doesn’t want anyone gettin’ past there, huh… you wanna try attackin’ it?”

Queen: “What do you want to do, Joker? We’ll go along with whatever you decide.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Skull: “Hey, it dropped something… is this some kinda keycard?”

Morgana: “Nice find! Maybe this’ll let us open that barred door.”

timrodresized: Your other option is to go up these boxes over to the right, which for some reason are not marked on the map.

timrodresized: The boxes lead to a vent, which you can crawl through to get to the other side of the door where that shadow is.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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…

Skull: “Talk about bein’ heavily guarded. They’re practically screamin’ 'bout how there’s something important in there.”

Crow: “It would be foolish to overlook this, though perhaps even more foolish to meet them head on… what is your call, Joker?”

timrodresized: Let’s pretend we don’t already have the keycard, and do this fight head-on as well.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Panther: “Okay then, let’s hurry up and take that guard down!”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Having ultimate equipment this early is great.

Crow: “Ah, aren’t those what we’re looking for? Oh, there are no names on them. They’ll be unusable if they remain unregistered.”

Oracle: “Mweheheh! I can handle that!”

Oracle: “I wasn’t sure what name to give it, so I just thought of a random one: Taro Tanaka.”

Skull: “That’s way too simple! Aren’t they gonna figure that out?”

timrodresized: Admittedly, if this were me, I’d probably have named them after the aliens from Buckaroo Banzai. That movie is a fucking experience.

Oracle: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Oracle: “Okay, the fake name for this card is a little more elaborate this time: Shinji Nakanomatsu.”

Oracle: “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.”

Crow: “Hm? Why me?”

timrodresized: If I was writing this, I absolutely would’ve had Futaba say something like “Because the trash is where you belong.”

Oracle: “These kinds of chores always fall to the newbie.”

Crow: “…Oh.”

Panther: “We can also use that elevator now, right?”

Queen: “According to the map, it would be quicker to use this path than to go back the way we came.”

timrodresized: As usual, Makoto is wrong. I’ll show you why, but first…

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: There’s a few more staircases and a lot of pointless bullshit. By the way, I realized I haven’t shown off Megidolaon yet.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: At the end of this hallway is another keycard door. If we take this, we wind up…

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Skull: “It didn’t say nothing about the one for the manager…”

Crow: “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.”

Mara: “Heh, members floor. I’ll fit right in.”

Oracle: “It’s impossible to mess with the data on the card too. It’s nothing like the ones I’ve seen before.”

Noir: “So we can’t go directly to the manager’s floor… in that case, what exactly should we do?”

Crow: “Our first move should be to head upward. Either way, we have no more business on this floor.”

timrodresized: 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.

Skull: “You wanna just get this over with right now, huh? That makes this easy. Bring it on.”

ShadowSae: “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.”

Fox: “It would seem she looks down on us.”

Crow: “And what if we would like to battle you, no matter what?”

ShadowSae: “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.”

Noir: “Continue to win?”

timrodresized: Metal Gear!?

Crow: “It must have to do with the fact that this place is a casino.”

ShadowSae: “Correct. Do you have the confidence to win?”

Queen: “We might just pull the rug out from underneath you if you aren’t careful.”

timrodresized: What the fuck is that facial expression.

Oracle: “It’s going up…”

Fox: “I wasn’t expecting to come all the way to a Palace only to end up gambling…”

timrodresized: Clearly Yusuke never did Snow Queen.

Panther: “What about you guys?”

Morgana: “Looks like this is going to take longer than expected.”

Skull: “We don’t got time to waste!”

Crow: “No need to worry. Leave this to me.”

Queen: “You know how to do this?”

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “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.”

Crow: “Sae-san didn’t use to be like this, did she?”

Queen: “My sister must have lost her sense of justice because her desires became distorted…”

Crow: “Do you think there was a particular event that triggered her Palace’s creation?”

timrodresized: It was when she realized she was an inferior ripoff of Katsuya Suou.

Queen: “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.”

timrodresized: This game uses the word “distortion” like Kingdom Hearts uses “darkness”.

Crow: “…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.”

Morgana: “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!”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: I think we know that. Also, you might want to cool it on the red text or people will think this is Umineko.

Oracle: “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.”

Skull: “For real!? Ugh, what a pain!”

Crow: “Why don’t we begin by walking around this floor? That should be a solid approach for acquiring intel.”

timrodresized: The game will make us stop at the cashier before we do anything.

Fox: “So all of this is going according to her plan… I cannot help but feel we’re being manipulated here.”

timrodresized: The chip tracker will stay with us for the rest of this dungeon.

Panther: “He’s just giving them to us!?”

Crow: “Perhaps this is a show of confidence. It seems she truly has no intention of losing.”

timrodresized: 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.

Noir: “That means we should probably start with the dice game… right?”

Morgana: “Prizes? What kind of things can we get?”

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: No fucking shit!

Fox: “That’s absurd! 50,000 coins!?”

timrodresized: 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?

Skull: “I don’t wanna do that! Owin’ cash to a weird-ass casino in someone’s head is way too weird!”

Morgana: “Oh well… standing around here won’t get us anywhere. So, should we head to this dice game?”

Crow: “Actually, do you mind if I speak to you all beforehand? There is something on my mind.”

Crow: “It would not surprise me in the least if all the games here were somehow rigged.”

timrodresized: 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!

Skull: “You think she’s cheatin’!?”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Panther: “What!? How can a rate like that really be possible? Are all those verdicts accurate?”

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “No… the investigators are merely human.”

Panther: “Then…”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: 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%.

Skull: “But it’s total bullshit gettin’ arrested even when you’re not guilty!”

Crow: “Indeed - and if we do not hurry, the Phantom Thieves will fall victim to a similar fate.”

Queen: “We’re going to win this, no matter what.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Panther: “Y-Yeah, I guess… that’s not really how a normal high schooler would describe it though…”

Queen: “In any case, we should proceed further in.”

timrodresized: I’m going to show you the easiest way to do this, which comes from my second run.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Oracle: “Super convenient, don’tcha think?”

Skull: “Oooh, so we’re gonna catch 'em in the act! I guess that’s easy… c’mon, let’s get to it!”

timrodresized: Let’s talk about why this area sucks. See the map here?

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: That entire area in red? Pointless bullshit! There’s some stealables in there, and a chest with a weapon for Makoto…

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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!

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Queen: “So this is the cheating control room… what should we do, Joker?”

Crow: “Very well. Let us dispatch it swiftly.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Nebiros is weak to Bless, and given that we have all four of the canonical archangels, this isn’t much of a challenge.

Oracle: “C’mon, we should stop the rigging.”

Crow: “Hold on a moment, I have an idea I’d like to discuss.”

Skull: “Whaddya wanna talk about?”

Crow: “I’ve devised an easier way of doing this… a way to get all the coins we need.”

Fox: “All of them in here?”

Panther: “Is that even possible?”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Skull: “You can do that!?”

timrodresized: 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.

Oracle: “Wait, this is a job for me! It’ll be a breeze!”

Noir: “Cheating seems somehow wrong though…”

Crow: “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.”

Queen: “…You’re right. Changing my sister’s heart is the ultimate goal here.”

Crow: “I feel bad asking this, but may we borrow your expertise yet another time, Oracle?”

Oracle: “I’m game! But man, you sure give a lot of orders for a noob!”

timrodresized: 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.

Oracle: “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!”

Crow: “Perfect. Now, let us head into the fray.”

timrodresized: There’s a door right around the corner from the control room you can use to get back to where the dice games are.

timrodresized: 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?”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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…

Crow: “There is no need to worry. We will most certainly win.”

timrodresized: I have no idea why they even have you do this, because the result is the same no matter what you pick.

timrodresized: We repeat this three times.

Crow: “We’ve got what we need - our next move’s up to you, Joker.”

Fox: “Have we reached our goal?”

Crow: “It still may not be enough.”

Morgana: “Are you seriously planning on taking every last coin in here?”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: This scene is not going to make any sense when we get to the slot room.

Skull: “Why me?”

Crow: “Because I am the ‘brains’ here, am I not?”

Skull: “Huh? Oh, sure.”

Morgana: “…Time to see what he’s made of.”

Noir: “That was amazing! It was like magic!”

Panther: “I could totally get addicted to this!”

Morgana: “Where are Crow and Skull?”

timrodresized: 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.

Queen: “Whoa…”

Skull: “So… heavy…”

Panther: “Amazing… we managed to get our hands on 6800 coins…”

Crow: “We still have a long way before we reach our goal though. Now then, on to the slot machines.”

timrodresized: Ignore the chip counter, I took this shot earlier.

timrodresized: This is just like the dice room in that we never actually have to play slots. In fact, there is no slots minigame.

Queen: “We’re here to make money, not to play your games!”

timrodresized: Atlus’s slogan for Persona as a franchise past Eternal Punishment. “We’re here to milk money from our fanbase, not make games!”

timrodresized: In the base game, this fight was against three Kumbhandas. Instead, we get a fight against one Jatayu, who is significantly higher level.

timrodresized: 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.

Panther: “Wait, why didn’t the guests around us react to that battle?”

Crow: “Perhaps as she sees it, they only care for their own victory, while ignoring the needs of others.”

Queen: “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.”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “I would expect they’re all rigged to prevent us from winning.”

Morgana: “Then should we deal with that first?”

Crow: “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?”

timrodresized: 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.

Queen: “That’s assuming we’ll even be able to solve the problem.”

Crow: “I trust in your ability to handle such a matter.”

Skull: “A-aight, let’s go look for that sweet, sweet slot machine!”

timrodresized: First though… you see that thing on the wall? That’s important. You can examine it to have it added to your map.

Panther: “Can you mess with it and figure out how they’re cheating, Navi?”

Oracle: “Welllll… this one’s on standby. Uh, basically I’m gonna have to activate it remotely from a main terminal somewhere else.”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Instead, you want to jump down here to make this entire process as painless as possible.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Right across from the green terminal is this pile of crap we can climb up to get to where the second will seed is.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “This must be the main hall of the slot room.”

timrodresized: 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.

Panther: “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!”

Morgana: “Assuming we can win, that is. If the reward’s high, the risk will surely be high as well.”

Crow: “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…”

Skull: “Lemme guess, ‘We will need to stop their cheating first’? There’s no doubt this one’s rigged too.”

Crow: “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.”

Oracle: “There’s prolly a terminal for info back behind the thing. Try looking there, Joker.”

timrodresized: There’s a chest on one side of the machine. The control panel is on the other side.

Oracle: “Mweheheh… let’s see… wow, they’re going really hard on this whole cheating angle. We wouldn’t have won a penny here.”

Queen: “Do you think you’ll be able to disable their rigging of it?”

Oracle: “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.”

Queen: “Do you know where we can find them though?”

timrodresized: 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.

Oracle: “Gotcha! We’ll be done after this!”

Crow: “…Hold on.”

Skull: “C’mon, what now?”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Queen: “So you want to take advantage of the system, just like we did for the dice game.”

Crow: “Essentially. My aim here is the giant slot machine.”

Panther: “You mean the one that’s 5,000 coins a play!? I don’t know if that’s really possible…!”

Oracle: “Oooh, sounds like fun to me. Just gimme a sec.”

Oracle: “The giant one’s still only on an 8:2 ratio though. There’s honestly no guarantee it’ll work properly.”

timrodresized: Couldn’t you just borrow 6,000 chips or whatever first? That’d give you two shots at an 80% chance of winning.

Noir: “Does that mean it will still miss two times out of ten? That’s somewhat concerning…”

Crow: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Anyway, the game will offer to warp you right to the big slot machine, so let’s do that.

Panther: “I-I wonder if we’ll actually manage to score that 50,000…”

Morgana: “She’s right. There’s a 20% chance the rig won’t work, and even if we win, it might not be enough.”

Crow: “This is a big gamble, Joker. Are you sure about this?”

Crow: “50,000 coins, hm? …You truly are special, Joker.”

Crow: “It is no surprise the customers are reacting to this commotion. We should leave for now.”

timrodresized: 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.

Crow: “I wonder if we’ll be able to use that slot machine again…”

Fox: “You wish to win more coins? I’m pretty sure we have enough.”

Crow: “More is always better than less. Then again, I suppose we are already good to go.”

Morgana: “That’s right… we have 50,000 coins now! Let’s go exchange them for a member’s card to the high limit floor!”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: Basically, the lesson here is never trust anyone named Barbara. It’s a lesson that has served me well in life.

timrodresized: Now that we have the coins, we can just buy out the store.

Noir: “We finally have the card! Let’s do our best on the next floor as well.”

Crow: “I hope I was able to contribute in some meaningful way. Come, let us head over to the elevator.”

Crow: “This must be due to the instigation of Sae-san. We should be prepared to fight.”

Crow: “We merely followed your rules.”

ShadowSae: “Hmph! I am the manager of this casino, and the rules deem that I am the victor!”

Crow: “It appears both the Sae-san of the real world and that of this world are at their wit’s end…”

ShadowSae: “…I think our guests will be leaving now.”

Skull: “You’re the only one who’s gonna be leaving, black suit!”

Morgana: “Things would’ve been so much simpler if we could do this from the start!”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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).

timrodresized: 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.

ShadowSae: “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!”

Queen: “Are you serious, Sis!? Why won’t you answer me!?”

Noir: “Mako-chan…”

ShadowSae: “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.”

Crow: “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…”

Queen: “Sis is completely distorted! We have to stop her, quickly!”

Noir: “We all feel the same way.”

Morgana: “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.”

Panther: “Huh, the manager’s floor still isn’t showing up…”

Oracle: “But she’s so close I can almost smell her! The next floor’s prolly gonna be the last one.”

Skull: “I said, outta the way!”

Noir: “We shouldn’t cause a scene.”

Fox: “It seems there is some kind of requirement we must meet before we can access this high limit floor.”

Skull: “Even though we got the coins?”

timrodresized: 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.

Queen: “It must be related to my sister’s cognition in some way…”

Panther: “I can’t imagine how though…”

Crow: “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…”

Crow: “… I would say it has to be the courtroom.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: 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.

Panther: “You really are an ace detective.”

Fox: “He’s come to understand the workings of the cognitive world so quickly.”

Skull: “I was just like that too, right?”

Skull: “I just understood it right away though. No need for that logic stuff.”

Noir: “That aside, how are we going to get into the courtroom?”

Oracle: “Ryuji! Go piss off the police!”

Skull: “Hell no!”

Queen: “We just need to attend a trial. Still, how are we supposed to know which trials my sister will be attending?”

Crow: “Leave that to me. I have some connections in mind. I will contact you once I manage to arrange a time.”

timrodresized: I wound up leaving without even using the fusion alarm.

Morgana: “It feels like we’re fairly close to the Treasure now. There’s no doubt we’re nearing the end.”

Crow: “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.”

Morgana: “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.”

timrodresized: 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.

timrodresized: After getting a massage from Kawakami, we’re doing Mishima’s Rank 9 tonight.

Mishima: “Let’s talk at the diner then. It’ll probably surprise you… but we can talk some more over there.”

Mishima: “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.”

Mishima: “I wish I had known that going in… one slip of the tongue in that act I pulled, and I would’ve been dead.”

Mishima: “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…”

Mishima: “H-Hi there…”

Mishima: “U-Um, not yet…”

timrodresized: The Zero wasn’t a stealth fighter though. Stealth technology didn’t really exist in World War II.

Mishima: “Akiyama-kun…”

Mishima: “Um, ‘before’? I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

Mishima: “Huh…?”

Mishima: “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…?”

Mishima: “I’m gonna work even harder now to make sure I live up to your legacy!”

Mishima: “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.”

Mishima: “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.”

Mishima: “And now I’m basically putting together a massive log of all your activities from the Phan-Site.”

timrodresized: Clearly, Mishima has learned nothing.

Mishima: “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!”

Mishima: “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!”

timrodresized: “Fancy fruit juice”, aka “Let’s order wine with a fake ID”.

Mishima: “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!”

timrodresized: Yes, partying until the last train with ‘juice’. Got it.

Mishima: “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.”

Mishima: “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…”

Mishima: “You heard what he said about me… but do you really think some part of me’s changed?”

Mishima: “Wait, really? You mean… I actually look confident now? Eheh… gosh, man, you’re gonna make me blush… but thank you.”

Mishima: “…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!”

timrodresized: Next time, we’ll go to court to see an unfitting visual metaphor and then finish off the casino.

There are some repeated images at the start of the fight with Shadow Honjo.

Akechi…what are you talking about? She wants you to not obtain that card by not winning coins in the casino. Because it’s a casino. She wants you to lose.

Just went back and fixed that. Thanks for pointing it out.

So do you think Joker’s telling Sae what the shadows look like? I’m having a chuckle imagining him telling her that her Shadow has a mountain of eyeliner and a tramp stamp of a dog.

Mostly I’m just weirded out that they needed to slam together two different metaphors (Running the casino and never losing vs. the dog fight with the collar and tattoo) into one goofy less coherent than either mess.

Sae: “Let’s say I believe your story. What did my Shadow look like?”

Joker: “Okay so look, your shadow is you but with a shit-ton of eyeliner on. We’re talking like, an entire tube of eyeliner. Per eye.”

Sae: “What.”

Joker: “Yeah, and then she’s got this weirdly cut fishnet dress, and yellow flower tattoos up her arms. Oh, and this hat that I can only really describe as ‘the fuck hat’. You know the one.”

Sae: “…Go on.”

Joker: “The weirdest part though is the tramp stamp. It’s of a doberman and you can see it because-”

Sae: “Lies! That’s not me! I would never have a… tramp stamp… especially not one of a canine! Even I know what kind of message that’s sending!”

Joker: “Pfft… did I mention the part about the collar? It’s one of those spiked ones from Hot Topic.”

Sae: “If you ever speak of this again, I assure you that you will not live long. Never speak of this again.”

She might just be glad her Shadow isn’t a dude in his boxers or a fat cartoon fly. In terms of maintaining dignity, Shadow Sae is actually doing comparatively well.

Click Here for Update 83

timrodresized: We get another reading period on the train that we don’t need.

Morgana: “This doesn’t make any sense to me. Does the author even understand what they’re saying…?”

Morgana: “So, you’ve finished reading Social Thought. I’m getting information overload… groan

Kawakami: “My neighbors have been careless lately on garbage day… the crows were cawing away this morning. Those trash nets the city makes us use only keep them away at the start. Crows are quick learners.”

Kawakami: “On that note, do you all know how to write the kanji for ‘crow’? The characters for ‘bird’ and ‘crow’ look very similar, but the latter has one fewer line. What do you think, Kurusu-kun? Isn’t it easy to confuse with ‘bird’?”

timrodresized: I know this is a mistake that comes up sometimes in fan translations.

Kawakami: “Do you know why it’s missing in the character for ‘crow’?”

Kawakami: “That’s right.”

Kawakami: “But crows actually have great vision. They can even see UV rays, apparently. By the way, one reading for a different ‘crow’ kanji is ‘ga’, to imitate the sound of it cawing.”

Kawakami: “The character for ‘pigeon’ is the same. It’s based on the bird’s coo, leading to the ‘ku’ pronunciation. Crows are pretty smart, so you’d better study enough so that you don’t lose to them.”

Morgana: “Crows are scary, lemme tell ya. When your eyes meet, they start flapping and. shudder

timrodresized: There’s no jury box, because this is probably a trial that’s not considered important enough for one. From what I’ve read, juries are only used for high-profile cases, like murder.

timrodresized: Huh. In the Ace Attorney games, the defense attorney is always on the left.

Yusuke: “Just being here causes my body to tense up.”

Haru: “I’m shocked that Niijima-san can think of somewhere this solemn as a casino…”

Futaba: “So Makoto’s sis is that lady who’s overflowing with the aura of a capable woman.”

Makoto: “…Mm-hm.”

Ryuji: “By the way, what’s this trial about?”

timrodresized: This is another reference to the trial of Ryutaro Nonomura, which I mentioned way back when we saw Madarame’s breakdown scene. It’s hard to believe I’ve been LPing this game for almost a year.

Ryuji: “Aren’t politicians supposed to be loaded? Why’d he mess with our tax money?”

timrodresized: Ryuji, do you even pay taxes?

Futaba: “Playing with other people’s cash is a total no-go.”

Haru: “This may sound odd, but isn’t Niijima-san supposed to be busy with our investigation? Does she really have time to be coming to a trial like this?”

Akechi: “Supposedly, she was on this case before being assigned to the Phantom Thieves… normally, another prosecutor would take her place, but… Sae-san can be a bit of a perfectionist.”

Ann: “Hey, how’re we gonna get Niijima-san to notice us? Did you tell her we’d be coming?”

Makoto: “I don’t think she read the message, though.”

Futaba: “Do we have a backup plan?”

Akechi: “…Not exactly, but I’m sure she’ll notice us eventually.”

Sae: “Hm…? I noticed a lot of students here, but is that Akechi-kun… and Makoto? Now that I think about it, there was a message about her coming… sigh That doesn’t matter for now.”

Akechi: “See? It’s almost time to begin.”

timrodresized: Let me just talk a bit about how this entire visual metaphor doesn’t really work at all. With Madarame, you had a visual metaphor that worked: the door in his house in the real world corresponded to the barrier, and opening the door opened the barrier.

timrodresized: Here, though, the barrier isn’t the door to the courtroom: that would make sense. Instead, it’s that fence between the audience area and where the people actually involved in the trial are. In fact, if you look, you can tell that the barrier in Sae’s palace is just a bigger version of that fence.

timrodresized: We’ll see a bit later (when we go back into the palace) that the visual designers knew that this was the case, and then kinda hamfisted it. The big difference here is that unlike Madarame’s locked door, the party never really gets over the physical barrier that corresponds to the one in the palace.

timrodresized: Now, there’s things they could have done to make this work. They could have put in a thing where Akechi slips a John Persona logo into a place where Sae would notice it, representing the idea that the barrier doesn’t mean anything to John Persona.

timrodresized: Instead, you get this, which doesn’t feel consistent with the way things worked in Madarame’s palace. There’s going to be a lot of that coming up, both in this dungeon and the final dungeon of the base game.

Morgana: “This should let us enter that high limit thingamajig! Let’s head over to her Palace once the trial’s over!”

Ryuji: “Stay in the bag, dammit!”

timrodresized: I don’t know why they chose to do this, because it looks like ass - it’s pretty clearly a flat screenshot they slapped over the 3D visuals and it sticks out, even if you’re not taking still shots of it.

timrodresized: It’s also kinda dumb because most of the other times they do the overlay thing, it’s in rooms that are scaled to their real-world counterparts. It’s why you don’t see it a lot in Futaba’s palace, or at all in Okumura’s.

timrodresized: It feels like the level designers didn’t know whether they wanted to go the Snow Queen route (where the Ice Castle is roughly the same size as St. Hermelin, but with stuff re-arranged) or just go nuts and make it so that the palaces can be completely different from their real-world counterparts, so they just did a little of both and hoped it’d mesh.

timrodresized: That’s another thing that really doesn’t make much sense to me: why they even included the whole ‘palaces are based on a real location’ thing if half of them don’t share any design elements whatsoever with the places they’re supposed to be.

Skull: “You’re gonna have a heart attack if you keep gettin’ surprised like that.”

Crow: “Haha… honestly though, this is all somewhat hard to believe.”

Fox: “Look, there is a counter up ahead. Shall we head there first?”

timrodresized: Before we do that, we can get the third will seed right now. Joker can grapple up to this chandelier, which seems pointless at first.

timrodresized: The trick is that you can jump off the back of the chandelier and onto a series of ramps along the back wall.

timrodresized: There’s a vent at the top.

Queen: “Sorry, but you’ll be letting us through!”

Morgana: “Hold on, Queen - I’m getting the feeling that this one’s gonna be a headache. We’ll probably want to be as ready as possible for this fight. Are we, Joker?”

timrodresized: We have four archangels. We’re ready.

timrodresized: I think this is one of the few times you can actually fuse a will seed miniboss before fighting them.

timrodresized: Baal might have been difficult if we weren’t overleveled and didn’t have Gabriel.

timrodresized: He doesn’t hit Joker due to Ali Dance - the only reason Joker is missing HP is because I didn’t realize the will seed was up there until I had cleared the rest of the floor.

timrodresized: Hadad is wiped out by Judeo-Christianity, just like in real life.

Queen: “And that takes care of that! Let’s move.”

timrodresized: Quality proofreading right there. I had to do a read-back because I thought I had read it wrong.

timrodresized: Sae’s will seed accessory sucks… until Jose improves it. Then it gives you a free Charge/Concentrate at the start of a fight, which makes it great for wiping out encounters fast.

Oracle: “Just 1,000 though. At least give each person that much, cheapskate.”

Queen: “Okay, show us your prizes now. We want to exchange our coins for a member’s card.”

timrodresized: Unfortunately, the prizes kinda suck. No Megidolaon tablets here.

Queen: “What? Then how are we supposed to get to the manager’s floor…?”

Crow: “Well, we cannot proceed unless we check it out. Why don’t we head over there for the time being?”

Panther: “Maybe it’s a scale-shaped bridge? There’s an area on the other side too. That could lead to the manager’s floor!”

Crow: “There can be no doubt… we’ll need to lower the bridge to cross.”

Noir: “But how do we do that?”

Crow: “Hm, how indeed. Let us try investigating around here.”

Noir: “What…? We need 100,000 coins just to cross over there!?”

Morgana: “It’s getting clearer that she has no intention of letting us proceed onward.”

Crow: “I don’t believe there is any need for pessimism though.”

Panther: “But think about how much that is! We were desperate just to get our hands on 50,000…”

Crow: “But we still obtained them in the end. We can succeed if we do that again, then double our total.”

Queen: “I suppose this is the high limit floor…”

Fox: “Indeed, there must be a high risk, high return game somewhere here. Though we’ll need to win too…”

Crow: “Our first order of business should be to see what kind of games exist on this floor.”

timrodresized: We saw them from the chandelier earlier.

timrodresized: We can’t do the Battle Arena, because it requires a 10,000 coin entry fee.

timrodresized: And now it’s time for what is probably the least annoying dark room in the entire Megami Tensei franchise. What, you didn’t think we’d get through an Atlus game without a dark room, did you?

Skull: “You better not be lookin’ for a fight. We ain’t interested!”

Morgana: “Participants?”

timrodresized: Wait, is this the Hunger Games?

Queen: “Of course we don’t. That should be obvious.”

Morgana: “…So we basically need to be our own substitutes. Eh, sounds perfect to me! That’s way better than spectating!”

Noir: “10,000 coins, just from completing a maze!?”

Crow: “It is no wonder they call this the high-limit floor. I doubt the maze will be as simple as it sounds…”

timrodresized: It’s kind of strange to me that they’d put a save room here when there’s one in the lobby just outside, but whatever.

Queen: “This is definitely not ‘a little’. We’ve been tricked.”

Oracle: “I’m sensing Shadows too. ‘Very simple,’ my ass.”

Fox: “If we do not ascertain the layout and placement of the enemies, we will surely find ourselves in danger. I just hope there is an adequate way of doing so…”

timrodresized: You can use Batman Vision to make things a little easier to see, and the enemies will appear on the minimap… even if there isn’t much of one.

timrodresized: The shadows in here are all the black-suited type, which makes them hard to see unless you’re running around with Batman Vision at all times.

timrodresized: I get ambushed by some Rangda. We want one of these, because they’re one of the two components for Shiva. Shiva is one of a handful of special fusions that do not involve more than two Personas - the components are Rangda and Barong.

timrodresized: Unlike the other special fusions, Shiva does not show up in the “Advanced Fusion” list - the only way you can even know the fusion exists is if you have Rangda and Barong in your roster at the same time.

timrodresized: We want Shiva because he itemizes into Ryuji’s ultimate gun, but also because he’s a component for Ardha, the final Temperance Persona. Ardha itemizes into Kasumi’s ultimate gun.

timrodresized: Anyway, Rangda is weak to Bless, and we’ve got plenty of that.

timrodresized: I’m pretty sure Rangda has a unique voice for the “I am thou, thou art I” line, and in Japanese it’s kinda funny because she goes “Ware wa Nanji, Nanji wa Wareeeeeeee” like she’s being tossed into the shadow realm.

New Persona: Rangda

Origin: Indonesia (Bali)

First Appearance: Megami Tensei I

Demon queen from Balinese mythology who leads an army of witches against Barong and eats children. Name means “widow” in the language spoken in ancient Bali. Possibly a home-grown version of Kali or Durga.

image

timrodresized: Rangda can be a pretty okay Persona, so long as you replace half her moveset. I believe she’s also one of the few Personas you can build to reflect everything.

timrodresized: There’s a few scattered groups of NPCs who don’t say anything.

Fox: “Impossible. We took the only path available straight to this point.”

Crow: “…It seems they have no intention of letting us proceed further.”

Skull: “Dammit, this is cheatin’… actually, it’s even worse than cheatin’!”

Queen: “Regardless, let’s search for a way past here. We can’t get the coins if we don’t reach the goal.”

timrodresized: This part of the dungeon is less about finding your way through the maze and more about playing “hunt the vent”. The vent is on the wall right next to the door.

Queen: “Hm, how convenient. If they’re not going to let us move forward, we can force our way through here.”

Crow: “Haha, an unsurprising idea for Sae-san’s sister. I will go along with whatever plan we choose.”

timrodresized: As soon as I got through the vent, there was a shadow waiting for me and I had about half a second to press the “attack” button to not have it be an ambush. We’ve fought Norn before.

Technically Returning Persona: Norn

Origin: Norse Mythology

First Appearance: SMT If

Norse goddesses more or less analgous to the Fates in Greek myth. The three major ones are Verdandi, Urd and Skuld - none of which have appeared in any Persona or mainline SMT game past Eternal Punishment.

timrodresized: Norn is kind of a trashsona, though she comes up on a lot of fusion lists.

timrodresized: There’s really not much to see here - you go through vents until you find an unlocked door. The room isn’t that big.

timrodresized: There’s two doors you can use to get in. The bottom one has a chest near it, but it’s nothing special.

Panther: “Is that it though? It feels like there’s more up ahead.”

timrodresized: The chest on the minimap is an SP recovery item. Thankfully, this is the last area of the dark room maze.

Skull: “What was that, you bastard!?”

Morgana: “I hope you’re read. We didn’t appreciate that trap of yours.”

Panther: “He’s right! You didn’t have any intention of letting us get past that maze in the first place!”

timrodresized: The miniboss is a Raja Naga, which has no weaknesses and likes to use electric attacks.

timrodresized: He likes to use Maziodyne, though in this case, that becomes his downfall.

timrodresized: He shocks Yusuke and then gets a Technical to reduce him to 10 HP, using the follow-up to force Yusuke to Endure. However, Raja Naga forgot one important thing: if you physically attack a shocked enemy, there’s a good chance the shock transfers to you.

timrodresized: Haru follows up with One-Shot Kill after Yusuke dumps his magazine. Boss down.

Queen: “Considering how things were on the members floor, it’s no surprise this isn’t a fair game either.”

Crow: “And yet we still reached our goal. Come now, let us go. We have no more business here.”

Fox: “Hm, we will have to go to another game if we want to win more coins… Joker, should we go back to the elevator?”

timrodresized: There’s only one other place we can even go, so let’s go there.

Panther: “Of course! Our teamwork’s gonna take down this arena of yours!”

timrodresized: If you’ve played Nocturne, you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of what’s coming.

Fox: “Don’t tell me…”

Panther: “Wait, what!? That’s enough to get us across this bridge! Come on, we need to do this!”

Crow: “Hm… this feels like a trap to me. An amount that high would certainly ensure great danger.”

Queen: “But failure to infiltrate this Palace will be the end of us.”

Skull: “So we don’t got a choice…”

Crow: “Very well. In that case, Joker should be the one to participate. We don’t know what kind of enemies may appear, so his high level of adaptability will be vital here.”

timrodresized: It’s mostly just beefed-up random encounters with lower HP.

Fox: “Are you sure about this? You will have to fight alone…”

Panther: “But… that’s why Joker’s the one doing it, right…? I mean, I understand why… J-Just be careful, okay? Don’t do anything reckless in there.”

timrodresized: Before you go in, you’re going to want to make sure you have something that can hit Psychic, something that can hit Bless, and a status effect. Or, you know, just Concentrate and Megidolaon. I was tempted to make a Mot with those, but that’s kind of a waste at this point.

Crow: “Only you will be able to continue from here onward. We’ll be cheering from the stands, so best of luck!”

timrodresized: I find it funny that the Mantra (an organization of demons who are firmly “strong eat the weak”) honor the whole one-on-one battle thing in their battle arena, but Sae doesn’t.

Panther: “This isn’t one-on-one at all! They’re just ignoring the rules right from the beginning!”

timrodresized: Joker opens with Concentrate, and then promptly gets critted by a Miracle Punch. Miracle Punch is a garbage skill that does no damage but has a high crit rate.

Noir: “How cowardly! There’s nothing fair or honest about this!”

timrodresized: I figured that it was probably going to take two turns to kill these either way, so I brought out Uriel and went right to Makougaon. Turns out the Rangdas here have lower HP than usual.

timrodresized: Oh look, a battle arena where the final enemy is Thor.

Oracle: “Yowza… that’s a big one.”

Music Nocturne Boss Theme

timrodresized: This is strangely appropriate given our mostly-angel party.

timrodresized: Meet US Ambassador to Japan John Thorman. He has no weaknesses and absorbs lightning. He’s also the source of Ryuji’s best melee weapon, meaning I’ll probably fuse one sooner or later.

timrodresized: Thorman’s tactics are pretty simple: he uses Charge, then uses Megaton Raid to do a shitload of damage. He also has Ziodyne (which he can randomly use instead) and Megidolaon if you reflect both Phys and Elec.

timrodresized: I’m pretty sure that this follows the same rules as that one Mementos boss, where you can null (but not repel) elec and phys and he won’t go to Megidolaon.

timrodresized: We’ll just make him drink of the wine of the wrath of God, then force him to hand over all the magatsuhi.

Crow: “Once again, justice prevails.”

Skull: “Ohhh shittttt! That was freakin’ amazin’, Joker!”

Panther: “You were incredible! They never even planned on giving you a fair fight in there.”

Crow: “Yes, I expected that would be the case. Our other trials have been rigged as well, after all.”

Queen: “So you sent Joker in knowing full well the possible dangers!?”

Crow: “I simply had faith in his skill. And to be honest… there was no other course of action available. Come now, we should head to the bridge. This shall be our moment to shine.”

timrodresized: The prize counter in the high-limit area has a new weapon for Akechi, an accessory that gives you Pulinpa (why) and an accessory that nulls Despair. I grab the sword and the Despair Charm.

timrodresized: I forgot to show it off earlier, but the chest you can see on the left has a new weapon for Joker in it. We’ll need to keep equipping Joker with new stuff, because you can’t get his ultimate melee weapon until New Game Plus.

Skull: “We got that! Now let us through!”

ShadowSae: “I never expected you would make it this far. I commend you on your vigorous efforts. However, you will never proceed to the manager’s floor ahead.”

timrodresized: I don’t know why she doesn’t just say a billion. Anyway, what we’re about to see here is a bit of an ass-pull if you’ve been using Akechi in the party the entire time.

Panther: “WHAT!?”

Oracle: “What!? That’s not fair! You can’t give us an impossible task like that!”

ShadowSae: “Ah, you finally understand? That is the point. Your task will forever be impossible! Hence, I will emerge victorious!”

Noir: “We had only just barely gotten 100,000 coins…”

Crow: “In that case, there won’t be a problem.”

Crow: “Not exactly. I already have the requisite coins right here.”

ShadowSae: “What…? How could that be!?”

Crow: “Do you remember what we were told at the very beginning? Essentially, we could borrow as many coins from the casino as we already held on our card.”

Noir: “Well yes, but…”

Crow: “For example, had we borrowed the max when we had 10,000 coins, we would have ended up with 20,000. And had we then bet on Joker at the colosseum as a guest, our total would have grown to 460,000.”

Queen: “Yes, but you’re speaking purely in hypotheticals. That’s not what actually happened.”

Crow: “Correct, on Joker’s card. However, that is not the only card in our possession.”

timrodresized: Akechi pulls out a mint condition first-edition Charizard, despite the fact that he probably would have been an infant when those released.

ShadowSae: “You have… another card!?”

Oracle: “That’s the Taro Tanaka card I told you to get rid of!”

Crow: “Exactly. Instead of disposing of it, I secretly used it to gather coins and outsmart this system.”

timrodresized: So here’s my question: WHY ISN’T MAKOTO DOING THIS!? This would have been prime SMART GIRL territory.

ShadowSae: “H-Hmph… so what? That’s still clearly not close to the required total.”

Crow: “Actually, once my count reached 460,000, I borrowed the maximum amount a second time. After paying back the original 10,000, I was left with 910,000.”

Crow: “Adding Joker’s total to that brings us to 1,010,000 coins. We can surely cross the bridge now.”

timrodresized: I’m surprised they didn’t put that number in as a variable, because we actually have 1,010,230 coins.

Crow: “Is there a problem? The manager’s room lies ahead. We won’t need to worry about coins after this. Or did you honestly intend on paying back such a large sum?”

Morgana: “Crow… it’s actually a little frightening how sharp you are…”

Crow: “I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m glad I was able to contribute to our Phantom Thieves efforts. Now, we should hurry and let the bridge down before she decides to change the rules once again.”

timrodresized: They come in the next day and Sae has installed a retinal scanner that specifically scans for eyeliner. Ann, Haru, and Yusuke quickly form a voting bloc to make Joker do it. It takes him days to get his face clean again and he has to endure Sojiro comparing him to Gene Simmons for the rest of the year.

Skull: “Hell yeah, we’re almost there!”

Morgana: “We had better be ready for whatever lies ahead!”

timrodresized: You see that door up the stairs? The one that’s just a giant roulette wheel? That should give you a pretty good idea of what Sae’s boss fight is.

Morgana: “A lot has happened, but we managed to get up here! Miss Manager’s days are numbered!”

ShadowSae: “How uncouth of you to simply barge in here. Elegance is necessary for victory as well, you know. I entertained you with all of my ‘games’, but it appears you are still far from satisfied.”

ShadowSae: “Very well. I’ve made preparations especially for that possibility. This will be a game of life and death from now on! No matter who I face, I shall not lose!”

timrodresized: Sis, please, you’re embarrassing me. I mean really, the tramp stamp? Was that really necessary?

Queen: “Our infiltration route is secure. We need to head back out and send the calling card.”

Crow: “And once the calling card is sent, Sae-san’s Treasure will appear, correct?”

Morgana: “Yeah. Once the target is cognizant of the danger, that cloudy thing will take shape.”

Crow: “I wonder… what will the Treasure look like?”

Panther: “That depends on the person… for Kamoshida, it was a medal. Madarame’s was a painting, and Kaneshiro’s was fake money…”

Noir: “Father’s was a plastic model…”

Crow: “In other words… the Treasure is what marked the beginning of the Palace ruler’s aspirations.”

Fox: “It could also be what caused their desires to swell.”

Morgana: “Thinking about it won’t get us anywhere though. Let’s head back and prepare the calling card.”

Noir: “Speaking of that, it actually looks like there’s a shape formed in the haziness…”

Queen: “If I had to guess… I’d say Sis’s Treasure is a police notebook.”

Crow: “Right… your father was…”

Queen: “She… probably thinks Dad died because the police were using him. That’s why she believes justice is meaningless, and that there’s no point living a subservient life…”

Queen: “Dad’s death is even the reason she aspired to become a prosecutor and grew so obsessed with winning… she really loved him…”

Crow: “Honest beliefs alone are not enough to get you through. Even I understand that pain… but that is exactly why we need to change our heart.”

Queen: “…Yes, that it is.”

Fox: “And now we’ve ascertained the location of the Treasure for that goal. Would you like to return to the entrance now, Joker?”

timrodresized: We don’t have a fusion alarm, and all of the Personas I actually want to fuse are still locked. There is one I wind up fusing a bit later, without any alarms.

timrodresized: There’s a TV quiz show thing we can do tonight, but why.

timrodresized: Where’s the option for “SuperPACs funded entirely by infinite amounts of corporate dark money?”

Morgana: “Oh, you got it right! So… what do you think? Do I count as a citizen?”

timrodresized: As usual, we call Kawakami. I’m really not sure why the game doesn’t do this automatically - I’m pretty sure it doesn’t cost you money, and there’s no reason you wouldn’t want it.

Sojiro: “I’m going to the church with Futaba. Sorry, but you’re coming along too.”

Sojiro: “No. We’re visiting Wakaba’s grave. Be ready in three minutes.”

timrodresized: It might seem strange for Wakaba to be buried at a church when no one mentions her being particularly religious, but that’s because Atlus didn’t feel like designing a new set for one confidant scene.

timrodresized: I mean, it’s either that, or Hashino really thinks that people are still buried in the church when they die.

Sojiro: “I’ve been so busy with the shop and all… no, that’s not it. The guilt is what kept me from coming. I thought Wakaba would be angry with me…”

Sojiro: “But now that I managed to get Futaba over here, I can finally meet her with my head held high. I sure kept her waiting… but it felt good to tell her about how much Futaba’s improved lately.”

Sojiro: “Oh… I told her about you too.”

Sojiro: “Idiot. I should be the one thanking you. Huh… this is the first time the four of us are all together.”

Futaba: “Sojiro? What are you smirking for?”

Sojiro: “Er…”

timrodresized: Sojiro is definitely an ending to Disco Elysium where Harry never realizes who he is and just kind of ends up here.

Futaba: “I approve.”

Sojiro: “Phew… oh, I have some news. The family court gave me a call the other day. Futaba’s uncle decided to retract his report. It was 'cause of you, wasn’t it?”

Sojiro: “I’m sure she’ll make a fine lady either way. After all… she is Wakaba’s daughter. sigh Do all fathers have to go through this anxiety…?”

Sojiro: “You know, I really just wanted to have you help out at the store. But you showed me so much more… you showed me I have a family I need to protect. Not just Futaba… but you too.”

Sojiro: “I may not always be reliable, but feel free to come to me if anything happens. I’ll be there for you… as family. And… ah, I know. I’ll teach you everything I know. You’re a full-fledged man now.”

timrodresized: I watched part of a speedrun of the base game while working on this update, and it turns Persona 5 into a game about how fast you can get to sleep.

Sojiro: “That might not be enough to return the favor… but it’s all I can do.”

Music The Path Is Open

timrodresized: Kohryu is the second best Nuke Persona in the game, next to one that requires a bunch of stuff we can’t fuse yet. It’s one of the easiest ways to get high-tier Nuke skills onto Michael.

timrodresized: I wound up fusing most of the components for it off-screen without using any alarms, because we can get all the skills we really need for Kohryu without them. I might buy an alarm for Kohryu itself.

timrodresized: I also realized I haven’t shown the “max confidant theme” from Persona 5 at any point. Unlike The Path is Open (which ONLY played when maxing an S-Link in 3 and 4) the theme in 5 is shared with a bunch of other story scenes. It also sucks compared to The Path is Open.

Music Swear To My Bones

timrodresized: No can do. Nothing can stop Straight Joker and his limitless amounts of horny.

Sojiro: “I can’t imagine you calling me ‘father’… although, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…”

Futaba: “What are you two talking about?”

Sojiro:“Nothing!”

Futaba: “I hunger! Curry time!”

timrodresized: Next time, we’ll see Ohya’s Rank 9 (and Rank 10) scenes. We’ll also see Shinya’s Rank 9, Iwai’s Rank 9, and Tae’s Rank 9 (and 10). We’re almost done with confidants. Calling card? What’s that? Why would we send one of those?

timrodresized: It’s actually kind of hard to believe I got this far into the LP. When I first started it, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish, let alone 100% the game a second time.

timrodresized: One minor addendum: before you leave Sae’s palace, make sure you grab one of these. They’re only on the first floor of the casino, and chances are you’ll auto-stomp them like I did without realizing it.

timrodresized: Power is a trashsona, but it’s a component for Metatron and also itemizes into Bless Boost and Bless Amp. It also learns Null Curse, though by the time we get around to fusing Metatron, we’ll have a way to get Drain Curse in skill card form.

Maybe I’m reading too much into Nice Cop’s offhand comment about Joker’s friends but…

The entire scooby gang here goes to court to watch Sae prosecute, including Joker (That she knows lives with Sojiro and she recognized him at the start of the interrogation scenes), Futaba (That she was using to try to blackmail Sojiro), Makoto (That’s her sister), and Akechi (That does… police stuff). All of them show up, in person, to explicitly be seen together by Sae.

And she was still surprised Makoto was a part of the Phantom Thieves.

Yeah, the parts with Makoto are a kind of a plot hole. There is a plot reason that she doesn’t ‘know’ who the Phantom Thieves are, but it’s… honestly kinda dumb. We’ll see that when we get to the bad ending of the base game, which happens pretty soon.

This is making me think it would be extremely funny but extremely terrible if there were books that were so bad they lowered your stats.

Haru…I can see the room. Atticus Finch isn’t exactly about to make his closing argument here. It looks more like my fourth-grade classroom.

I also, uh, don’t see the point of this interlude. If I were to guess, they were stressed that Sae’s Palace would feel shorter than the others, even though it’s the penultimate (I think) palace, since you don’t have to leave and come back five times.

This feels like the solution to one of the games in Liar Game. Only in Liar Game, the solution would have been twice as complicated and also 40 chapters earlier, Akechi would have said “Nao Joker, for this game I think we should act separately”.

This one’s gonna get a lot of angry letters about the question being ambiguous.

Click Here for Update 84

timrodresized: Thank you game for giving me all these reading sessions when we have nothing to read.

timrodresized: We unlocked Kohryu in the last update, and I want to fuse him - mostly because he’s the easiest way to fuse a component for Asura, but also because when you’re fusing very high-level Personas, the list of possible fusion components shrinks dramatically and we need every one we can get.

timrodresized: You may recognize this specific combo of Personas, because they formed a fusion attack in Innocent Sin that was… underwhelming, to say the least.

New Persona: Okuinushi

Origin: Japan

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Japanese god with 80 brothers, all of whom vied for the love of a single princess. Saved a skinless rabbit (the Hare of Inaba) who predicted that he would be the one to marry the princess. Eventually marries the princess, which causes his brothers to conspire to kill him using such classic tricks as making him chase a “boar” (actually a flaming boulder) and crushing him between two halves of a tree.

After dying twice and being revived, he falls in love with Susano-O’s daughter, rendering the entire thing pointless.

timrodresized: Someone really needs to do an edit of that “spicy keychain” comic where Okuinushi is crushed by a flaming boulder and going “My boulder! My boulder is red hot! How could you give your own brother the spicy boulder, Dominic!?”

timrodresized: Anyway, we want Okuinushi for one reason: he learns Psy Boost and can pass it down to Seiryu.

Returning Persona: Yatagarasu

Origin: Japan

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Poorly-understood divine bird that is a servant of Amaterasu. Most of the sources of Shinto canon regarding it are contradictory, and it was probably mixed up with a different bird from Chinese mythology.

timrodresized: Yatagarasu is a trashsona I’m fusing for the sole purpose of fusing with Okuinushi.

Returning Persona: Seiryu

Origin: China

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

One of the four Chinese constellations representing the cardinal directions. Represents East, along with the color blue and wood. Also appears in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean myth. Known under a number of different names, including Qing Long in China… though the name most people in the West are going to be more familiar with is Shenron, the name he appears under in Dragon Ball.

timrodresized: Seiryu is a vessel to pass down Psy Boost, but also learns Repel Nuke. Kohryu is weak to Nuke, so this will cover that gap.

Returning Persona: Byakko

Origin: China

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II

One of the four Chinese constellations representing the cardinal directions. Represents West, along with autumn and wind.

Returning Persona: Suzaku

Origin: China

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II

One of the four Chinese constellations representing the cardinal directions. Represents South, along with fire and summer.

timrodresized: I think I already logged Genbu earlier, so let’s buy an alarm and put this all together.

New Persona: Kohryu

Origin: China

First Appearance: Megami Tensei

Dragon that rules over the four Chinese constellations. Represents earth and the changing of the seasons. Doesn’t appear in Japanese mythology.

timrodresized: We don’t really need Spell Master that badly, because we already have Psychic Bloodline. With Psy Boost and Psy Amp, Kohryu is a pretty solid Psychic Persona, even if he’s not the best one.

timrodresized: Anyway, let’s send the calling card.

Ryuji: “So, when d’ya wanna send it? The earlier the better, right?”

Akechi: “No… in my opinion, we should wait until right before the time limit.”

timrodresized: Read: “We should wait because Joker has to get caught right after the boss fight and we still haven’t seen Maruki’s Rank 10 scene which happens on 11/18.”

Makoto: “May I ask your reasoning behind that idea?”

Akechi: “Sae-san is a realist. Even if she believes the Phantom Thieves exist, do you think she knows how they steal hearts? Furthermore, there is a chance she expects that she herself will be targeted.”

Haru: “So because her heart is ready for any possibility, the calling card might not have enough effect?”

timrodresized: Wait, how would Akechi know this? He didn’t even know about the treasure thing until the party told him. I mean, I know he’s the killer, but still.

Akechi: “I only say that theoretically, but I believe so. Hence, it would be prudent for us to wait until we are driven into a corner to act. If we do so with no time to spare, I assume even Sae-san would have to be somewhat agitated.”

Makoto: “Hm, ensuring the Treasure actually appears… that sounds quite logical. Impressive, Akechi-kun… though it is a bit vexing that you know more about my sister than I do.”

Akechi: “Haha, that’s only because of my work as a detective. Well then, if our time limit is November 20th and we act the day after sending the calling card… shall we send it out on the 18th?”

Morgana: “We should prepare as much as we can before then. Well, I can’t complain about having more time. Make sure you’re ready, everyone!”

Haru: “I brought it here in hopes of doing some serious gardening.”

Morgana: “Wow… she’s so diligent…”

timrodresized: As it turns out, asking Haru to grow vegetables does not take time - I mean, it does in that you have to wait a few days. Remember those items we picked up from Sakai that double the next Physical or Magic attack?

timrodresized: Haru can grow those. Your two best options here are probably the Moonlight Carrot (full SP restore for one person, basically a Soma) and the Star Onion, which doubles the next magic attack.

timrodresized: Anyway, let’s do Rank 2 of her confidant. I grabbed an Empress Persona off screen when fusing Kohryu. You need Proficiency 5 for this event… but why wouldn’t you have that by this point?

Haru: “The soil here would be so healthy if you were here more often. Honestly… I’m surprised that my gardening can be of use to our work as the Phantom Thieves. This started as just a hobby, so it’s amazing to see it transform into a more practical skill.”

Haru: “Beyond this, I’ve actually begun raising plants of my own at home. …Coffee beans.”

Haru: giggle “You’re so funny, Akira-kun! You don’t actually need a farm for coffee beans. You can grow them in a garden just like normal vegetables. Though… the plot I’m using at my father’s villa is large enough to turn into a farm if I so desired.”

timrodresized: You don’t need a farm for coffee beans when you’re a multi-millionaire heiress who can simply buy a significant portion of Colombia.

Haru: “Anyway, I recently discovered the joy in the taste and aroma of coffee. I used to think it was purely bitter, but now I understand the depths of its flavor… to tell you the truth, I wasn’t even able to drink it before…”

Haru: “Ah, pardon me. I was just thinking back on the past… um… can I share with you again? As I mentioned before… I cannot bring myself to trust any of the employees at Okumura Foods.”

Haru: “For as long as I can remember, the company has been run by my father. Being liked by him was always very important. Some employees would even come to ingratiate themselves to me.”

Haru: “…But since his passing, things have gotten unruly. Most evidently, people have started trying to use my influence as majority shareholder to oust other employees. They say they come to me out of respect… but I know they really just want to use me.”

Haru: “I’ve heard so many rumors… the worst ones are about Takakura-san, the new president. They say he was thrilled to hear my father passed.”

timrodresized: Takakura is supposed to be the guy in Okumura’s unused will seed cutscene (at least I think he is).

Haru: “There may be truth to that, though. He’s been with the company for years, but has only started being nice to me recently. He even offered to assist me with asset management. I fear he has an ulterior motive though…”

timrodresized: Fun side note here. Haru’s confidant has the fewest wrong answers out of any confidant that isn’t an automatic rank-up (like Mishima’s or Yoshida’s). This is the only one you can even get wrong.

Haru: “Yes, I can’t help but wonder about him… he even went as far as to recommend I sell my shares the other day. He said I could make a fortune…”

timrodresized: I don’t get why she wouldn’t. I mean, she’s not an executive and isn’t drawing a paycheck, which are usually the only reasons executives stick around in reality.

timrodresized: Theoretically, she could force them to hire her, but this whole thing feels like the writer had no idea how this kind of thing works in real life and decided to write it anyway.

Haru: “Takakura-san must be scheming to take the company for himself… at least, its possible.”

Haru: “Indeed it is… none of the advice I’ve gotten so far has been helpful either. Everyone only speaks out of their own self-interest… thank you for today though. I feel a little better after talking about this with you.”

Haru: “Oh, and don’t worry. I’ll make sure I keep myself motivated, even through these difficult times.”

Haru: “I’m going to stay here a little while longer to check the drainage. I need to make sure these vegetables turn out as good as possible for the Phantom Thieves.”

Haru: “It’s not terribly important, but what vegetables do you tend to like most, Akira-kun? I might as well grow things that everyone likes eating.”

timrodresized: I went with this one because it’s what the guide goes with.

Haru: “Mm, I’m not sure I have seedlings for that. It sounds a little too big for a planter, too. But it might be worth growing! A melon just looks so gorgeous. Maybe I’ll try growing some in my garden.”

timrodresized: I mean, given that she can grow onions in three days, I’m betting this is because the Umbrella-style T-virus laced fertilizer she’s using doesn’t work on melons.

Haru: “Thanks for sharing your preferences. I’ll try my best to grow them. I hope you’ll be able to keep helping me. Good night for now.”

timrodresized: Tonight, we’re doing Ohya’s Rank 9. I’m actually going to put off doing her romance scenes until probably after the next update, because that’s how much of a pain in the ass it is.

Ohya: “She’s gotten so skinny, she looked almost like a stranger… she wouldn’t say anything either. I think she had a… mental shutdown, is it called?”

timrodresized: Ohya’s confidant sucks near the end because her Rank 9 is horribly low on points. Even if you get every answer correct, there’s a deficit of between 4 and 6 points to reach Rank 10 depending on whether you did the romance route or not.

timrodresized: This means you need THREE affinity readings to be able to finish her confidant if you are not going down the romance route. It sucks! The first time I tried to record her Rank 10, I wound up having to reset because I thought I could accomplish it with two.

Ohya: “It’s still a mystery… she’s not in a state to talk about what happened. Her doctor said they found her collapsed in the street just about a year ago now. She had been wandering along the coast without any belongings, so the director’s wife took her in.”

timrodresized: Wait, wouldn’t that be enough to prove that John Persona couldn’t possibly be the same one behind the murders?

Ohya: “…All we can do is pray. Either way, Kayo is still a suspect, so bringing her back here would just put her in danger again.”

Ohya: “Not necessarily. I have her hairclip. It looks like an ordinary accessory, but it actually has a miniature camera built inside. Remember that voicemail where she said she had something big? Well, it was all in the hairclip.”

timrodresized: Kayo was somehow the only person smart enough to have insurance in case they got brain murdered. Akechi has been at it for a while.

Ohya: “…It was a picture of the bureaucrat’s secret meeting. The other party must be the one behind the slush fund. And that other party…”

Ohya: “Yup. It’s pretty clear that confidant was blackmailing the bureaucrat, and killed him for not paying up. Kayo must have managed to escape, but then ended up suffering a mental shutdown somehow…”

Ohya: “I’m not sure what could possibly cause something like that though… in any case, maybe that’s why they decided to leave her alive… heh… they underestimated her journalistic talent.”

timrodresized: I feel like they should’ve done something with this in Royal - maybe as an alternative to Sae’s palace - to give people more of a reason to play through the game again.

Ohya: “But given the current situation, it’s going to be difficult to write an article about it. I wouldn’t have Kayo’s testimony, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to corroborate her story. I’d get crushed if I tried to take them on without being fully prepared…”

Ohya: “Who do you think I am? I’m gonna do whatever it takes to pursue the truth! I said I need to be fully prepared, didn’t I? It’ll just take a while.”

Ohya: “I’ve resigned myself to a long battle anyway. I have her photo. Now I gotta get some solid evidence, and lay the groundwork to prove her innocence. I’m going to avenge Kayo!”

Ohya: “…Well then, our deal’s over. It’ll be too dangerous for you to stick around from here onward. You understand, right? The opposition won’t think twice about taking down anyone in their way.”

Ohya: “I’m sure I’ll get targeted… so to be safe, you shouldn’t come here again.”

Ohya: “W-Wow, that’s mature of you… honestly, I appreciate the concern, but it’s really not that simple.”

timrodresized: Joker: “Akechi can’t brain-murder me. He can’t even beat Gabriel, and by this time next month I’ll have Lucifer.”

Ohya: “Fine. If you’re sticking your nose in this on your own free will, then there’s nothing I can do. I’ll solve this case on my own… but I appreciate having a friend who’s got my back.”

Ohya: “All right, let’s have a kickoff party! We’re gonna break out the champagne tonight!”

Ohya: “Mannn… lamest kickoff party ever! I guess the booze doesn’t matter though. It’s all about the company!”

Ohya: “I know at first it was for the articles, but you don’t have any obligation to stay now, you know. Ohhh, I know. Did you take me seriously when I told the chief we were a couple? Geez, you kids today are so naive!”

Ohya: “That couple act…”

Ohya: “O-Of course. Thank goodness…! It would’ve been way too much trouble to be with a minor… what’s taking Lala-chan so long? And what’s with the heat? I mean, don’t you think it’s hot in here?”

Ohya: “All this heat is making me tired…”

timrodresized: Three days of doing nothing but sleeping and getting affinity readings later…

Ohya: “Yep, replace the previous article. No worries, right? Might as well go all out if we’re gonna do this! I’m gonna scrap the others and rewrite them as well. Yep, tomorrow morning then…”

Ohya: “Sorry, that was the chief…”

Ohya: “I’m doing a special expose on the Phantom Thieves, and the chief’s helping me. It’s about their origin and the root of the problem they’re trying to solve. … I think it really captures the spirit of journalism.”

Ohya: “As if! Your observations and analysis are the heart of the story. The higher-ups were against it, but this expose has been very popular with our readers. Since we’ve sold so many copies, there’s nothing they can do about it… or us.”

Ohya: “So, we’re planning to throw in additional articles while we have the chance.”

Ohya: “Thanks. I’m still counting on your contribution to help us sell issues, you know. All riiiight, let’s throw a victory celebration! Lala-chan, I hope you have some champagne for us!”

Ohya: “That’s what I figured, so I reserved a bottle at the wine shop.”

Ohya: “I wanted to speak with you… in private.”

Ohya: “Oh, loosen up a bit, will ya? I’ve been quietly making preparations to write a story about Shido’s confidant too. I’m going to uncover the truth… I swear to Kayo. Thanks… again.”

Ohya: “Whenever I felt like giving up, you encouraged me to keep going. It’s all thanks to you that I was able to get this far…”

Ohya: “The chief’s change of heart happened exactly the same way as those other cases. And the timing was absolutely perfect. You’re the only one who could have orchestrated all that.”

Ohya: “Lala-chan’s more of a… phantom menace. Aw crap, she’s gonna be so pissed!”

timrodresized: So what you’re saying is that Lala is singlehandedly responsible for ruining Star Wars? I mean, I don’t see how she could do any worse than George Lucas, or whoever Disney has on it these days.

Ohya: “I’m convinced from all the recent coverage that the Phantom Thieves truly are valiant. Helping the weak… punishing the bad… they actually do all those things. In a sense, you and I have the same objective. We both want to expose the ills of society…”

Ohya: “Sooo, I won’t tell anyone about your true identity. Let’s form a united front to fight evil. …If it weren’t for you, I never would have been able to return to my journalist self.”

Ohya: “My high schooler source who manipulated information ended up manipulating my heart too…”

timrodresized: Wow that’s corny.

Ohya: “I’m gonna return the favor one of these days, all right? Ahahaha! Until then, we’ll race to see who can expose evil first!”

Music The Path Is Open

timrodresized: Beelzebub is the best Curse Persona in the game, but there’s only 19 possible fusion combinations to make him - and of those, five involve ranking up a Belial or Nebiros via treasure demon fusion.

Ohya: “Anywaaaay, where the hell is Lala-chan…? Shall we get started then? Considering we’re already in a celebratory mood?”

timrodresized: Joker pulls out the air horn. The horny has infected another one.

timrodresized: Now that we’ve seen that, let’s move on to what we’re actually doing over the next three days.

Ann: “We’re sending the calling card on the 18th, so we have less than a week left now. sigh I’m getting nervous.”

timrodresized: Game, why are you doing this, I can’t make it go any faster.

Ann: “You too, Akira? That’s surprising… still, this time is different than usual, having a set date to send the calling card and all. This mission will determine our fate. We have to succeed no matter what.”

Hiruta: “Have you ever heard a recording of your own voice? Were you surprised? That’s because when you hear your voice normally, you hear it through your bones.”

Hiruta: “The voice you hear in a recording that makes you feel uncomfortable is unmistakably your own voice. Now then, Kurusu-kun. Has hearing someone’s voice over the phone ever felt strange to you?”

Hiruta: “I wonder. Do you know why voices sound so different over the phone?”

Hiruta: “That’s correct. I’m surprised you knew the answer. The sound is synthetic… it’s practically not even their voice anymore. To transmit data, cell phones use a certain way of encoding your voice into digital information.”

timrodresized: So wait, which is it - is it unmistakably my own voice, or is it bad voice encoding because cellphone manufacturers don’t really give a shit about the phone’s capability to make and receive calls?

Hiruta: “Oh? You think you’d be able to tell if you were hearing a computer talking? As long as the tone and intonation match, the listener’s brain fills in any other differences. Most of our communication is based on assumptions.”

Morgana: “Yeah, my voice just sounds like meows to people who don’t know me. Geez… assumptions are dangerous.”

timrodresized: Today, we’ll be doing Shinya’s Rank 9.

timrodresized: On a side note, I tried recording Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for an LP. The first case is over four hours long, has a character assert their extraterritorial rights, and by the time I was a quarter of the way through it I had more than 1,400 screenshots. So yeah no, I’m not LPing that.

timrodresized: It also kinda drags. There’s an entire plot point that really didn’t need to be there, and at the end of the day it’s basically a clone of a similar case from the third game.

Shinya: “My mom really did have a change of heart! When I got home, my mom cooked dinner. She made my favorite, hamburger steak! Then she admitted that she was wrong and apologized to me for getting so mad about everything.”

Shinya: “Yeah! It’s all thanks to the Phantom Thieves… and you, Kurusu-san. I guess winning and losing doesn’t matter when it comes to just being happy.”

Shinya: “Well, isn’t it true? The reason my mom was able to change is that she lost to the Phantom Thieves. Losing wasn’t the end at all. It brought my real mom back. Man, I’m so happy right now.”

Shinya: “Am I weird… for feeling happy about losing? I mean, all I cared about before was winning.”

Shinya: “Really? Well, if you say so, then it’s gotta be true! I wanna get stronger. Strong enough that I can protect my mom… I realized something from you and the Phantom Thieves.”

Shinya: “Instead of destroying others, protecting and saving people is what makes a person strong. You listened to my problems, and even confronted my mom for me… I-I guess that was pretty cool of you…”

Shinya: “By the way, do you remember Takekuma? The pro who beat me? I heard more rumors that he uses illegal armor. I wonder why he’s cheating…”

Shinya: “Yeah… I kinda understand how that feels. I might’ve cheated too, if I had known how.”

Shinya: “Okay, I’m gonna head home. Hey, Kurusu-san, are the Phantom Thieves… never mind! Bye! Let’s play again sometime!”

timrodresized: The phone call for this event sucks. It’s basically a recap of what we already just saw in the confidant event, and I was going to cut it entirely.

Shinya: “My mom and I have been eating meals together every day now. She’s a really good cook! She even made my favorite hamburger steak! I’m so glad she’s back to her old self! I’m so thankful for the Phantom Thieves!”

Shinya: “What, me? Nuh… all I did was hand her the calling card. Oh yeah, could I give you a message to pass along to the Phantom Thieves? Tell them… thanks for changing my mom’s heart! I’ll become strong enough that I can protect her myself!”

Shinya: “…Okay? Oh, my mom’s calling me for me, so I’m gonna go. See you later! Mooom, what’s for dinner?”

timrodresized: Gotta make sure to get those three fucking affinity readings for Ohya. Have I mentioned we also need two affinity readings for Dr. Femdom? Because we do.

timrodresized: I may actually save Dr. Femdom’s Rank 10 for next update, because it’s a lot of re-recording and remembering to get readings.

Iwai: “This thing’s an antique. I’m not gonna sell it to anyone less than a real gun expert. Oh, and about Tsuda… I heard he got excommunicated from the clan. Apparently his boss found out about what happened. Serves him right, huh?”

Iwai: “…Think so. Pretty big relief, assumin’ it’s true. I mean sure, that bastard pissed me off, but I never once wished he’d up and die on me.”

Iwai: “This whole thing’s been real crazy though. I mean, Tsuda used to be the role model for upholdin’ the code… I guess this is what he meant when he said times’re changin’…”

Iwai: “The hell’re you doin’!? You motherfucker! Hey, hold on! Dammit! That bastard Masa’s abducted Kaoru!”

Iwai: “He damn well better be, or else Masa’s a dead man! God, that piece of shit! He knew about Tsuda’s failure the whole time… I bet he was just waitin’ for a chance like this!”

Iwai: “Right. They’re over at Seaside Park. I’ll grab the keys n’ lock up! C’mon, let’s go!”

timrodresized: They should’ve written in a line where Joker turns to Iwai and asks “So uh, if the yakuza were about to buy a bunch of fake guns, do we even know that knife is real?”

Iwai: “Kaoru…”

Iwai: “I said, let Kaoru go!”

Iwai: “…So, what’re you gonna make me do?”

timrodresized: …His entire plan is to take a shipment of fake guns, which the yakuza know are fake, and attempt to sell them to the yakuza anyway. Fucking brilliant writing.

Iwai: “Sorry Masa, but you got some real shitty timin’. We just broke ‘em all down. There’s nothin’ left.”

Iwai: “That ain’t true! I’m tryin’ to protect you, Kaoru!”

timrodresized: I like to think that Iwai is facepalming not because his son is being held at knifepoint, but because he’s realized how incredibly stupid this entire situation is.

Iwai: “Kaoru…”

Iwai: “Akira…”

Iwai: “Kaoru, listen… there’s somethin’ I been keepin’ from you for a while now… and you’re prolly not gonna like it. Truth is, your real parents didn’t die in a car crash.”

timrodresized: The truth is Kaoru’s the one who died in a car crash, and has now been isekai’d into a game written by Hashino.

Iwai: “You were abandoned by your mother when you were still a baby. That’s why I took you in. Believe it or not… I was actually part of the yakuza back then.”

Iwai: “Heh… chuckle attaboy, Kaoru. Listen, Masa… let’s put an end to this, right here, right now. We can start fresh.”

timrodresized: Oh look, it’s Tsuda… with his gun that’s probably fake. I swear, they’re like goldfish.

Iwai: “Tsuda!?”

Iwai: “Looks like it. So, what now?”

Iwai: “…Take care, brother.”

Iwai: “Heh. Honestly, I’m surprised you stayed calm through all that. Guess you’re maturin’ quicker than I even realized…”

Iwai: “Heh, sure is. I never woulda been able to say all the shit he did. Y’know, I’ve been so busy makin’ sure he doesn’t end up like me that I forgot to see who he’s actually becomin’. Heh… I can’t believe I’m only just realizin’ this now.”

Iwai: “And it’s all thanks to you, kid. I appreciate it… for real.”

timrodresized: What are you, Futaba?

Iwai: sigh “You seriously eat on a whole 'nother level. You might even end up taller than me someday. C’mon, let’s head over there.”

timrodresized: This is another phone call I was strongly considering cutting entirely.

Iwai: “I’m glad Kaoru’s safe and all, but… man, he ended up with a hell of an appetite after that. Sure was somethin’… ‘connected by the gecko,’ huh? …The kid must’ve grown into a man while I wasn’t looking.”

timrodresized: Why is he telling Joker this? Joker was there, and we’ve already been to the diner with Kaoru once already!

Iwai: “Ugh… after goin’ out to eat with you guys, I can barely move. Too stuffed. …But somehow, it’s the best feeling in the whole damn world…”

Iwai: “Thanks, Akira… you did some great work. Hah… you got me sayin’ all this sappy shit. Downright embarrassing. I gotta go get some air, cool down a little. All right. Later.”

timrodresized: There’s another trade we can do today, and I’ll show it off even though there’s no reason to. The trade gets you an axe for Haru, but we just unlocked the Persona that fuses into Haru’s best axe - that being Beelzebub.

timrodresized: The timing on fusing Beelzebub is going to be a bit tight, but I’m hoping to get it done before we fight Sae’s shadow.

timrodresized: First, we want to buy a Moon Dango from the grocery store in Yongen-Jaya. This is convenient, since we’re doing Tae’s Rank 9 today.

Tae: “Let me know if you need anything else.”

Tae: “…Excellent. Then the rest is up to you.”

Tae: “Yes, he’s my little guinea pig.”

Tae: “He just so happened to be a year ahead of me in college. I told him everything since I was so close to perfecting the medicine. I have to thank you again. All this is thanks to you helping me with the clinical trials.”

timrodresized: Government regulations? What government regulations?

Tae: “I bet. Although it was really fun for me. From my tour of their medical facility and discussions I had with their development team… I’m confident this will be a success, and they’ll complete development on schedule.”

Tae: “The final result will be out of my hands though… if I don’t accept their offer, that is. I was… recruited. He offered me the position of head of research and development at his hospital.”

Tae: “…Which means I’ll have to close my practice. I start first thing next month. Unfortunately, Takemi Clinic of Internal Medicine will be gone.”

timrodresized: I feel like the writers for Strikers stopped reading this right here, because her clinic is closed in Strikers.

Tae: “I’ll urge my patients to transfer to that hospital, and I’ll be sure to give them priority there.”

Tae: “…Just kidding. The part about being recruited is true, but I don’t intend to close my practice. I kind of like being a general practitioner. I’ll still work with them to develop new medicine though.”

Tae: “Once the medicine’s perfected, I’ll be able to see Miwa-chan… and receive my reward: her smile. Oh, I need to give you your reward too. I’ll think of something to give my little guinea pig for holding up his end of the deal.”

timrodresized: Her Rank 10 reward is kinda garbage, in that all it does is let you buy the equivalent of a Samarecarm (full heal + revive) in item form.

Tae: “You were really concerned when you thought I was going to close this office. I know you said it was for your entrance exams, but come on, really?”

Tae: “I think it’s about time you started being honest with me. It’s okay. You can tell me. Why do you keep coming to me?”

Tae: “Is that so? Well, I can take a hint. It’s getting late… you should get going. Come visit anytime. I’ll see you later.”

timrodresized: Here’s another phone call I probably should’ve just cut. In fact, had I known how bad a lot of these are, I probably would have made it a policy to skip them in general.

Tae: “I’ve got my drug in the hands of someone I trust. Everything’s on track for the cure to go through. And something tells me… I’d never have gotten this far without you.”

Tae: “Thanks for doing this. You stuck by me, even when one of those side-effects could have killed you. You really are the best guinea pig I could’ve hoped for.”

Tae: “Well, it’ll still need some tests and adjusting before it’s ready for actual treatment. Still needs lots of work. But I have faith that someday soon, I’ll help Miwa-chan smile again.”

Tae: “…And I haven’t forgotten all you did to help. I’ll make sure to bump up your compensation a little. Okay, I’m going to hang up now. We’re done with the clinical trials, but you can drop by anytime you need some more medical supplies.”

timrodresized: Dammit! You don’t tell someone you’re going to hang up and then just keep on talking! That’s not how that works!

Tae: “Might as well keep getting checkups, too. Better safe than sorry, right? I’ll look at whatever you need me to.”

timrodresized: We can trade the Moon Dango for the axe now, but… why.

timrodresized: When I saw this, I went “Wait, what? Is this supposed to be a parody of Saw?” The answer is yes.

timrodresized: Shortly before this, you can hear an elephant and a guy who sounds like Jigsaw. I’m kind of curious what this movie’s title is in Japanese.

Haru: “How was it for you? Do you like scary movies?”

Haru: “Yay, me too! Thanks for hanging out with me today. I had a lot of fun! It’s too scary to watch these alone - and I didn’t have any friends I could ask before, so…”

Haru: “I’m really happy that we could watch it together! Ah, it’s time we headed back home.”

timrodresized: We’re going to stop here, because this update was cursed. First I got to the night of 11/14 (which, as it turns out, is actually when we do Ohya’s Rank 10) and realized I forgot to go down the romance route.

timrodresized: Then I found out that my screenshot tool fucked up and none of the screenshots took, so I also lost Haru’s event that day.

Summary

timrodresized: Let’s pick the other choice.

timrodresized: Oh no! Our fake romance has become a real one, just like every time any writer ever has used this as a plot device!

Ohya: “I-I mean, um… seriously?”

Ohya: “Urgh, y-you shouldn’t be so straightforward…! B-But, I… um… I… what I’m trying to say is… I think the feelings are… mutual.”

timrodresized: A lot of these romance routes feel like the writers didn’t intend for there to be one, and then Hashino (or some other exec) shows up and goes “No, we need romance routes for EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER.”

Ohya: “Hold on - you seemed to drop that line pretty easily, didn’t you? If you’re this smooth now, who knows how big of a player you’re gonna be when you get a little older! You’re gonna dump me, huh!?”

Ohya: “…Just kidding. I’d understand if you decided to dump me someday though. I mean, you have a bright future ahead of you… so I’d probably just be holding you back.”

Ohya: “But I guess I can stick around until then… I-I can’t wait to see where our relationship goes, Akira.”

Ohya: “Let’s keep this a secret from Lala-chan… God, I can already hear her teasing me about it! …And stop looking at me like that! I’m so embarrassed!”

Ohya: “Um… sorry. Never had a high-schooler boyfriend before. Not sure how I’m supposed to act now. Look, the point is I, uh… crap, I forget. Yeesh, am I that old now!?”

Ohya: “Actually, do YOU have anything you wanna say to me instead? Cause now’s the time.”

Ohya: “W-What the… you are WAY too smooth for a high schooler! Where’s this coming from!? That’s the type of line that seals the deal at nightclubs. God, you are gonna be an absolute menace in a few years…”

Ohya: “B-But… there are worse things than looking after a guy like that. Kind of a thrill, actually. …I’m feeling sooo weird today, haha. Sorry, let me get myself together.”

timrodresized: Now let’s do her Rank 10 romance scene. Fun fact, the first time I saw this I thought I had hit a non-rankup event because it uses the same music as a lot of the non-rankup events and I wound up reloading the game, only to realize that no, that was the Rank 10 event all along.

Ohya: “…It reminds me of the time I came here with Kayo. This is a special place for me. It’s where I convinced Kayo to become my partner. Since I’ve been re-examining my career as a journalist recently… I wanted to come back here.”

Ohya: “And… I wanted to talk to you about…”

timrodresized: At this point, she gets the phone call that she gets at the start of the other Rank 10 event. The dialog is identical until after the rank-up screen hits.

Ohya: “Let’s go someplace I can have fun with a minor… like, maybe an amusement park? Or…”

Ohya: “Really? You’re not just being lazy, are you? Then… you wanna come over to my place? I’m not a very good cook, but I’ll make you something…”

timrodresized: Is that something going to be canned crabmeat?

Ohya: “Wh-What’s with the shocked look!? Even a journalist cooks at home from time to time! I just want to… relax with you. Eat some delicious food, have some dessert, lie around…?”

timrodresized: And then they fuck. I’ll be doing Tae’s romance scenes next… once I finish recording them. This whole three-day waiting period is shit.

Oh no, Shido also has the Wild Card!? Truly a dangerous enemy…

I thought about it a little. The Japanese name for Saw is just Sou, and the Japanese word for elephant is zou, so the title is probably just Zou.

The real Nisekoi was within us the whole time.

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timrodresized: More pointless reading time.

Morgana: “Is this philosophy? I’m not sure if I like this writer. He seems a bit condescending…”

timrodresized: I could say the same thing about Hashino, only I definitely know I don’t like him.

Morgana: “So, you’ve finished reading Wise Men’s Words. I wonder if these old philosophers had many friends… they’re always talking to people, but I dunno…”

Ushimaru: “Geez… you all look like a bunch of dead fish. What was it? Your phone? Video games? I know you were up late. I always wake up at sunrise. On the other hand, kids these days…”

timrodresized: “I always wake up at sunrise, and then I sit on my porch shaking my fist at all the people passing by until it’s time to go to bed.”

Ushimaru: “Hey, Kurusu! Are you awake!? Look at this map!”

Ushimaru: “Tell me why that is.”

timrodresized: Back in his day, he climbed Mount Fuji every day to get to school. It was uphill both ways.

Ushimaru: “That’s right. The more east and south you go, the earlier the sun rises. However, what affects it most is altitude. So, excluding the outlying islands, the sun rises earliest on Mt. Fuji.”

Ushimaru: “That said, who knows when dawn will ever come for this country. The government and police are completely incompetent. Those Phantom Thieves need to be caught before anything else.”

Morgana: “We’ll show you… we’ll show you who’s just.”

timrodresized: Today, we’ll be doing Haru’s Rank 3.

Haru: “Within its gentle care, even a tiny seed can awaken, spread its roots, and grow up towards the sun. It’s almost like a mother. …Perhaps that aspect is why I find this place so comforting.”

timrodresized: I don’t think Atlus ever explains who Haru’s mother is, even in the “extended universe” type material.

Haru: “You know, I only started taking care of these planters because one of my teachers asked me to. I was hesitant at first… but I liked it so much that I kept them long past the original request.”

Haru: “I started mixing my own fertilizer, adjusting soil ratios… now I raise these plants in complete secret. But um, Akira-kun… I’m worried about what the school might do if they found out about this.”

timrodresized: The real question is why she wouldn’t just, you know, make a garden at her giant mansion.

Haru: giggle “You’re so dependable. In that case, we can be partners in crime! Honestly, Akira-kun… I really enjoy the time we spend together… it’s so different from how I feel when I’m around him.”

Haru: “Oh, sorry… I meant my fiance. That reminds me though, I wanted to ask your advice about him… this whole arrangement began when my father first introduced us, around the winter of my second year in high school.”

Haru: “I was told we were just meeting his friend for dinner… but then he said that ‘friend’ was to be my fiance. It was surprising… but I suppose I had always known I would someday be married off for political gain.”

Haru: “So… I accepted, and that was the start of our relationship.”

timrodresized: Naturally, they had to put this in or the fanbase would probably riot.

Haru: “A-Anyway, I was never exactly fond of him to begin with, but now he has grown far worse. Recently he’s been suggesting we go on an ‘early honeymoon’ together to celebrate our coming marriage.”

Haru: “I can’t even stand to look at him though… let alone spend any actual prolonged time together. So, um… what can I say to decline his offer…?”

Haru: “R-Right. I suppose it would be best to simply be clear about it. As you know, my father passed away before he could fulfill his promise to rescind the marriage proposal… so any conversation about putting a halt to the marriage will have to come from me.”

Haru: “To tell the truth… I’ve already mentioned it to my fiance. But he refuses to listen to a single word I have to say. Apparently, he’s even been telling the employees at Okumura Foods about the contract he made with my father…”

Haru: “How the company would have to pay extreme reparations if it got called off for any reason…”

timrodresized: In the US, this is outright unenforceable, and I’m pretty sure the same is true for Japan.

Haru: “I just… don’t know how to handle this. I can postpone while I’m still in high school, but after that…? Thinking about it now, it seems my father’s death has turned out to be quite favorable for my fiance.”

Haru: “I suppose in the end, all he really cares about is his own personal gain… but that’s not what a relationship is supposed to be built on. It should be something more…”

Haru: “Something like… a love so intense that just seeing the other person makes your chest tighten up. Have, um… have you ever experienced that?”

timrodresized: All of the answers here give you full points, but I think if you use Chihaya’s thing it’ll tell you to do the second one. Naturally, we’ll pick the first, because it’s true.

Haru: “Really…? That’s so romantic. I’m actually a little jealous. Of you… and of the girl.”

timrodresized: It’s funny to me that answering that way doesn’t lock you out of the romance route. Joker looks at her and goes “Girl? You do realize Yusuke and I are dating, right?”

Haru: “But… there’s no spark like that with my fiance. Spending time with him is almost like some kind of training… still, any hardship I go through now will surely help the Phantom Thieves eventually. I’ll get through this!”

timrodresized: Unfortunately, we won’t have all of Haru’s abilities until the final dungeon of the base game.

Haru: “Oh, it’s getting late. I should probably get back to my gardening. Well, I think I’ll be staying here a little while longer. See you later.”

Haru: “Um… you remember we talked about my fiance. He won’t stop asking me to spend the weekend with him. My excuse was that my friend was calling me… so here I am, away from him.”

Haru: “Hee hee… I’ve never done anything like that before. My heart was pounding! He’s been getting more and more persistent. At this rate, I don’t know how long I can play along…”

Haru: “But hearing your voice calmed me down a bit. Thanks for listening to me. I’ll let you go for now… see you later.”

Inui: “I wonder if the Phantom Thieves had a hand in that. Many of those shows had noble thieves and shady people. Nezumi Kozo was one of the gentleman thieves in the Edo period.”

timrodresized: I wasn’t able to find any info on whether or not Nezumi Kozo was a real person, but I’m gonna lean no given that the Wikipedia page has no sources.

Inui: “According to one theory, he stole over one billion yen, making him the most wanted man of the era. He was to be paraded through the city, and punished in a very particular way. How was he punished?”

Inui: “That’s right. One of the most severe punishments of the Edo period, in fact. Right before his execution, they did something to his appearance. They put light makeup and lipstick on him and made him wear a beautiful kimono.”

timrodresized: I’m just picturing this guy at trial in an ancient Japanese courtroom and the judge looks at him and goes “The court really doesn’t give a shit about the thieving part, but finds your wardrobe… outdated. I sentence you to a makeover.”

timrodresized: Shit, they should make a court show where the judge is a kid and all of their decisions are legally binding. Just have some kid find the trial boring and sentence both parties to a makeover.

Inui: “The parading around town of a well-known criminal was a sort of performance back in the day. The citizens wouldn’t have been satisfied if he had looked shabby.”

Inui: “I wonder what will happen if those Phantom Thieves get arrested. These days, it won’t just be their heads that will be put on display.”

Morgana: “…People are having fun thinking about that, huh.”

timrodresized: In the canon route, we’re doing Haru’s Rank 4 today. However, because of how Tae’s confidant works, we’ll be doing her Rank 10 first.

timrodresized: Tae’s Rank 10 happens during the day if you are on the friendship route, and at night if you are on the romance route.

timrodresized: Like Ohya, Tae’s Rank 9 is short on points - you need four points (two readings worth) to get from Rank 9 to Rank 10. Fortunately, I had miracle RNG and Joker gained the points in his sleep.

timrodresized: To get an idea of how rare this is, you have about a 50% chance of getting a social stat point if you skip a night by sleeping. The other 50% gives you three points to a random confidant - but it doesn’t do a sanity check to remove confidants that are already maxed.

timrodresized: This scene is kind of unique in that the friendship route has dialog that the romance route does not. The romance route (also part of the cursed recording) takes place at Leblanc instead.

Tae: “What are you talking about?”

Tae: “Oh, that’s not true.”

timrodresized: Joker’s like “It really doesn’t matter, because this is anime and we all know the childhood friend is never a valid romance choice.”

Tae: “Likely because she’s jealous of you. Just be careful because it might result in pandemonium.”

Tae: “She even comes in on days she doesn’t have to. It appears she’s nearly fully recovered. Which reminds me, the new medicine will be completed soon. Your data has been extremely helpful, due to your generic body type and bland health history.”

timrodresized: Oh, I see. Miwa’s an anime protagonist.

Tae: “You’ve been a splendid guinea pig… I mean, participant. So, thanks again. By the way, how have I been doing? Have I been helpful?”

Tae: “…Come on. You and I both know that you were lying about needing to prepare for the entrance exams.”

Tae: “I visited Oyamada in jail. A swing of fortunes like that could have only come at the hands of the Phantom Thieves. And to have it happen when it did… isn’t the only logical conclusion to think that it’s you?”

Tae: “A normal person would probably… notify the police. Well, I don’t care. The point is that without you, I wouldn’t have been able to complete my mission.”

Tae: “I would’ve never finished the new medicine… while I was being deceived by Oyamada. And I would’ve never met any of the townspeople…”

Tae: “I bet the Phantom Thieves save people in need, just like doctors do, huh? So, I’ll go out on a limb for you. I’ll have even more powerful medicines ready for you… I trust that you’ll use them appropriately.”

Music The Path Is Open

timrodresized: Alice is like Shiva and Ardha - she’s a Persona with specific components that doesn’t show up in the advanced fusion menu. Her components are a direct reference to SMT 1… which is kind of unfortunate given that SMT 1 never got an official localization.

timrodresized: Her components are Nebiros and Belial, who were her servants in SMT 1. That fusion combination (or some variation of it) has been used in every game where Alice is an obtainable demon.

timrodresized: I fused her on the cursed run, but let me just log her using some shots borrowed from the SMT wiki.

Returning Persona (technically): Alice

Origin: SMT Original

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I

While her appearance is based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, this Alice is actually an undead girl from Shin Megami Tensei I who is resurrected by Nebiros and Belial - and it’s heavily implied that the Alice who shows up in SMT II, SMT if, Devil Survivor and SMT IV is the same one from SMT I.

image

timrodresized: Alice is a Persona who was a lot more useful in the base game (where Ryuji’s Insta-Kill ability didn’t give you EXP and money), but who is basically useless in Royal. By the time you’re able to fuse her, you’re either going to be high enough level that you can insta-kill any random encounters you come across or you’re going to have something better.

timrodresized: My biggest problem with her is that she doesn’t itemize into the Karma Ring or Linden Amulet that we had in Innocent Sin… and will pass down to Eternal Punishment if I ever get the chance.

Tae: “So you better make some money in the name of ‘justice’. giggle Now, go. Take care.”

timrodresized: Now for Haru’s Rank 4. We also need to buy an alarm today, because I want to fuse Beelzebub.

timrodresized: Haru’s Rank 4 requires Proficiency 5. I think I said it was her Rank 3, which is incorrect.

Haru: “Well, I’ve decided to start studying the topic more seriously by going out to places like this. I’ve been keeping it a secret from my fiance though. You see, just a single cup of the Dark Ivory coffee here costs roughly six thousand yen.”

timrodresized: You can probably guess what joke they’re going to make here, given all the news coverage around exotic coffee around the time the base game was written.

Haru: “I’ve heard it is. Apparently, the beans they use here are exceedingly rare. At the very least, we should try it before passing judgment. Well, shall we order? I’ll be paying for your cup as well.”

timrodresized: Joker’s like “Look, I’m going to spend almost a million yen on Beelzebub tonight. Two cups of coffee is nothing.”

Haru: giggle “You’re such a gentleman, Akira-kun. But allow me to handle this. I invited you, after all. On top of that, aren’t you supposed to always listen to your elders?”

Haru: “Well, here we go…”

Mara: Why does it smell like Girimehkala in here?

Haru: “…It has a distinctly fragrant aroma, paired with a mild flavor. This is undoubtedly delicious, yet… I would barely consider it coffee.”

Mara: No! Bad Girimehkala! Get out of the chocolate-covered coffee beans! Great, now he’s not going to sleep for a month."

timrodresized: The actual brand name for the elephant shit coffee is Black Ivory. I’m not sure how popular it is now that the whole “coffee beans made from animal shit” fad is largely over.

Haru: giggle “I apologize for not disclosing that to you earlier. I just thought you might find it hard to enjoy if you had known ahead of time. I was surprised to hear it at first myself, but that was actually why I wanted to try it to begin with.”

Haru: “Another rare type of coffee, kopi luwak, is gathered from the feces of a small cat called a civet. Interestingly enough, the flavor differs depending on what animal it was originally consumed by.”

timrodresized: Kopi Luwak has a lot of problems involved with it, including the factory-style farms used to make it that have raised allegations of animal abuse and the large amount of fakes sold as the real thing.

timrodresized: I’ve also read that there’s a few types of coffee which are much cheaper that have close to the same flavor Kopi Luwak does.

timrodresized: Joker gets on his phone and texts Morgana: “Hey Morgana, can we monetize your shit?”

Haru: giggle “Perhaps it could become Leblanc’s new specialty drink. Oh, but we need Mona-chan for our operations, huh? We can’t afford to make him eat beans all day… hm… coffee is so profound…”

timrodresized: The civets don’t actually eat the beans - they eat the cherries the beans grow in. The beans are a by-product.

Haru: “T-Takakura-san!?”

Haru: “Oh, he’s a friend from school. Akira-kun, this is Takakura-san, the new president of Okumura Foods.”

timrodresized: If you look closely, you’ll see little blue-green blobs floating around. That’s because it’s Flu Season. It’s really noticeable a few shots down.

Haru: “Well, I…”

Haru: “R-Right. We’re in the process…”

Haru: “N-No, that’s quite all right. And, um… about the shares… I can handle them for now. I’m going to protect that which my father left for me.”

Haru: “Hey, um… what did you think of him?”

Haru: giggle “You’re so honest, Akira-kun. But… I agree. I really don’t know whether or not I can trust him. Right now, the most prevalent rumor about Takakura-san is that he was pleased by my father’s passing…”

timrodresized: You might notice this confidant event is rather long, and that’s because in the base game, this was most of the interaction you got with Haru. I think it feels kind of unfocused though - it’s like they didn’t know whether they wanted to make Haru’s confidant about her or about Okumura Foods.

Haru: “I mean, he was certainly the person who stood to benefit the most from it… it’s hard to deny that fact. But… he says he’s trying to rebuild our company image. I just can’t tell if he really means it…”

Haru: “…You know, sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t have money… if I was normal. Don’t get me wrong, the company is definitely important… but it’s often nothing more than a source of stress.”

Haru: “With you guys though… I feel like I actually belong. That’s why I’m going to work extra hard to make sure my harvests turn out great!”

Haru: “Oh, and as for that ‘Sugimura-san’… that’s my fiance. He’s been really showering me with presents lately. One night he even left a bouquet of roses on my pillow.”

Haru: “But… he would have needed one of my servants to help him accomplish that, right? What a scary thought… even worse, Takakura-san has been hurrying to get us married after what happened to my father.”

timrodresized: It also feels like Hashino didn’t know whether he wanted Haru to be an out-of-touch rich girl or not.

Haru: “Even worse, Takakura-san has been hurrying us to get married after what happened to my father. He claims it’s because of the profit the marriage will bring to the company… but there has to be more to the situation than just that.”

Haru: “Anyway, I’ll look a little deeper into Takakura-san. Perhaps he truly was pleased by my father’s death. Maybe I should start by asking the employees who are trying so desperately to win my favor…”

Haru: “Well, goodbye.”

Haru: “You took the time out of your schedule to hang out with me, but we ended up dealing with my own drama…”

Haru: “Hee hee… I’ll let you know if I find another nice spot. It won’t always be that luxurious though. …Lately, I’ve felt so suffocated. I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

Haru: “But it’s so reassuring to have someone like you. Someone who listens to me. I’m going to do whatever I can to look further into Takakura-san. I might come to you for help again if I find something… well, see you again later.”

timrodresized: If we were still following the trash guide, we’d be doing Chihaya’s Rank 9 tonight. Instead, we’re going to go for Mishima’s Rank 10… just as soon as I buy a fusion alarm.

New Persona: Scathach

Origin: Ireland

First Appearance: Devil Summoner

Scottish warrior who trained Cu Chulainn in martial arts and gave him his spear, the Gae Bolg.

timrodresized: There’s two routes you can go down with Beelzebub, which we’ll see in just a bit. We fuse Scathach out of Pale Rider and Ganesha to pass down Curse Boost.

New Persona: Surtr

Origin: Norse Mythology

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I

Norse fire giant who rules Muspelheim, the land of fire. Wields the flaming sword Laevateinn.

timrodresized: We need Surtr because he’s one of the only Personas we can fuse right now that will fuse into Beelzebub. Blazing Hell and Fire Amp isn’t bad either - though I could (and actually did, on the cursed run) make Surtr with Fire Boost as well. With that, he’s a pretty good source of fire damage.

New Persona: Ishtar

Origin: Mesopotamia

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II

Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. Features heavily in the epic of Gilgamesh.

timrodresized: I fuse Raphael and a treasure demon into Ishtar, who is normally a pure support Persona. Her job is to pass down Spell Master to Beelzebub. Finally, with Surtr and Ishtar…

New Persona: Beelzebub

Origin: Canaanite Mythology

First Appearance: Megami Tensei

Originally a Canaanite god by the name of Baal Zevuv (meaning “Lord of the High Place”) that may or may not have been the same god as Hadad. The Judeo-Christian faith turns him into a demon by the name of Baal Zebub (meaning “Lord of the Flies”) as a way of mocking the Canaanites. Catholics consider him to be one of the first three angels to fall, along with Lucifer and Leviathan.

timrodresized: Welcome to Christianity, where if your god isn’t our God, it’s automatically a demon. There’s two routes we can go down with Beelzebub.

timrodresized: He starts with Maeigaon and Mamudoon, then quickly learns Concentrate and Curse Amp. This is the first route, where you use him for damage rather than instakills. It’s the one I picked, and with a side of Blazing Hell and Fire Amp, he’s also a good (but not great) fire caster.

timrodresized: The other route involves dropping Maeigaon and Curse Amp and instead picking up Demonic Decree, turning Beelzebub into an instant-kill user with Demonic Decree for targeting weaknesses.

timrodresized: The problem with the second route is that it’s kinda pointless when Alice exists. Beelzebub is also one of the few Personas to learn Curse Amp, and it’s a total waste if you don’t use it. Plus, Maeigaon with Curse Boost and Curse Amp (along with Beelzebub’s naturally high magic stat) is probably going to out-damage Demonic Decree.

timrodresized: I then itemize him into Haru’s final melee weapon. Dizzy is nice because anything used on a dizzy enemy is a technical, and a higher Magic stat is always welcome - especially on Haru, due to her ability to hit technicals.

Mishima: “How I’ve changed. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to run away back when I saved him. So, I was thinking why that may have been.”

Mishima: “Honestly, I was pretty desperate at the time, so I don’t remember much… but in the back of my head, I was thinking what you would do in that situation, Kurusu.”

Mishima: “I mean, you put yourself on the line to stop Kamoshida, and probably other villains too. So, I thought there had to be something I could do myself.”

Mishima: “You know… I’ve always wanted to change. I wanted to go from the dull nobody everyone messes with to the famous world-renowned hero. But you helped me realize something important.”

Mishima: “Heroes aren’t heroes because they’re famous… it’s because they fight for other people. Looking back on it, what I really wanted to change was the weak me.”

Mishima: “The me on the volleyball team who let wrongdoing go unpunished, even though I knew it was unjust… the cowardly me who looked the other way when people I knew were in need of help…”

timrodresized: Strange of him not to mention the horny him who kept trying to get laid at all costs.

Mishima: “…Tell me the truth. I only changed because you stole my heart, right?”

timrodresized: The funny thing about this is that it’s actually a major plot point. No, really. It’s a major plot point that’s in a totally optional scene.

Mishima: “Huh!? You mean I didn’t have a change of heart? What…? …No, it really was you. You changed my heart. All this time, I’ve been looking up to the Phantom Thieves, pretending to be a collaborator.”

Mishima: “And now I’m finally able to stop pretending. Truth be told, I had given up. I accepted that I was a zero… that my existence was meaningless. But I’ve learned. I may not be able to change the world, but I can change myself.”

Mishima: “Whether I sulk about my inability to do anything, or hold my head high and look to the future… my perception shapes the boundaries of my world. It all comes down to what’s inside my heart.”

Mishima: “I might still mess up every so often, but as long as you’re here, I’ll be able to stand up again. So I may not be the best person around, but you can feel free to rely on me at least sometimes!”

Music The Path Is Open

timrodresized: And there we go. That’s one of the last components we need for Lucifer… but unfortunately, we can’t do anything with Sandalphon yet. We can’t fuse Metatron yet, and we don’t have the one skill I really want on Sandalphon to pass down to Lucifer - we need either the final Persona from Futaba’s route or the final Persona from Morgana’s route for that.

Mishima: “That’s all I can really do for you right now… but I’m working on that documentary too. I even plan on making it into a book someday. I’d bet anyone who reads about the Phantom Thieves would find the hidden courage within themselves.”

Mishima: “Maybe that means I can use that book to change people’s hearts!”

Mishima: “All right, I’m on it! Oh, but before that… I’m hungry. Come on, let’s grab a bite to eat on the way home. Maybe a buffet…? Wait, no. We should save that for after I get all my book royalties! Heheh, you’d better be looking forward to it.”

timrodresized: We have reading time today, but instead of doing that, we’re going to use this time to do one last crafting session.

timrodresized: The Perma-Pick is an infinite-use lockpick. We got the ability to craft it some time ago, but didn’t have the materials to do it - though I believe you can buy them once you unlock Akihabara.

timrodresized: Its usefulness is kind of dubious at best. There’s only a few locked chests left in the game, and while we can now open all the locked chests in Mementos, the only things we’re going to find in there are dirty armor and healing items (and maybe the occasional black item, but we only need so many of those).

timrodresized: In Royal, the Perma-Pick carries over to New Game Plus… but by that point, there’s no reason for you to use it. Your equipment carries over in both the base game and Royal, and the stuff in the chests doesn’t scale.

timrodresized: Anyway, let’s move on to Maruki’s Rank 8. We’re two days before the time limit to finish his confidant, after all.

Maruki: “Not! I had you going there, didn’t I? Kurusu-kun, you’re in for a real treat today! I know it’s been a while since you’ve had one, too!”

Maruki: chuckle “Good question. So, I recently found this delicious-looking buffet. It’s apparently very well-regarded, has all sorts of cuisines… well, thanks to your input, I’m making some real progress on my paper.”

Maruki: “I’d like to take you to that buffet, as my way of thanking you. How does that sound?”

Maruki: “Of course! Honestly, I feel like this won’t even cover what I owe you after all you’ve done for me. Well, that settles it, then! We should head over there now, before they get too busy.”

Maruki: “Mmhm! Dig in! Although… maybe I went a bit overboard for my first trip? Hahaha… oh, right! Sorry, would you mind if I asked you about something before we eat? It’s about my paper…”

timrodresized: They gave Shibusawa a portrait, despite the fact that he only really shows up in two scenes. This is probably because he’s recycled assets - he’s Maruki’s portrait with different hair.

Maruki: “I knew it! Shibusawa, in the flesh! What are you doing here?”

Shibusawa: “That’s my line. It’s rare to see you in a restaurant like this one. …Oh? And who might this be?”

Maruki: “Oh, he’s, uh… how do I put it?”

Maruki: “Ahaha, no, not at all. Anyway, this is Kurusu-kun.”

Shibusawa: “Nice to meet you. I’m Shibusawa.”

Maruki: “Shibusawa was one of my colleagues back in college. He’s the one who recommended I pursue a counseling career.”

Shibusawa: “And I hear it’s been doing you some good, too. I catch wind of your goings-on every so often. Honestly, it’s a big relief. You have so much more compassion than most, but you can also be a bit too carefree.”

Maruki: “You didn’t have to mention that part - not that I can refute it…”

Shibusawa: “But anyway! Tell me more about how you’ve been - fill me in on this guy too!”

Maruki: “Oh, uh, but aren’t you here with others? What about them?”

Shibusawa: “Eh, it’s fine - we just happened to swing by here. They won’t mind my being away for a bit. And do you think you two are really gonna be able to tackle all that food on your own?”

Maruki: “What? Oh… right.”

Shibusawa: “And that’s where you’re counseling now?”

Maruki: “Yeah. But only part-time.”

Shibusawa: “So what are you two doing out at a place like this? This isn’t some kind of private counseling session, right?”

Maruki: “He’s, well… he’s been giving me a hand with my research. I just brought him here as a thank-you for all his help.”

Shibusawa: “…Research?”

Maruki: “I had meant to mention this earlier, but… my paper is finally almost finished.”

Maruki: “Mm, it’s all thanks to you, though.”

Shibusawa: “Paper? The one you were doing research for… you mean you’re still…?”

Maruki: “Yep… I’m still at it. Even after all of what went down. You remember what I told you? That I’d finish this paper no matter how long it took me.”

Shibusawa: “Maruki… hahaha! You blow my mind sometimes! I swear, you’ve gotta be the most stubborn man in the world!”

Maruki: “Is that supposed to be a compliment? And anyway, it’s not 100% complete yet. I haven’t even begun the peer review process.”

Shibusawa: “Oh, seriously? I’d be more than happy to peer review it for you. I mean, I did perform all the peer reviews for your publications in college!”

Maruki: “Huh? Really!?”

Shibusawa: “Of course, man, why not? In fact, that’s it - this is now officially a celebration! The meal’s on me today!”

Maruki: “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I’m supposed to be treating Kurusu-kun today…”

Shibusawa: “Oh, don’t worry so much! Don’t you wanna congratulate him too, Kurusu-kun?”

timrodresized: What Joker desperately wants to say is “The ‘middle-aged guys who peaked in college’ energy in here is a bit too strong and I feel like I need to leave.”

Shibusawa: “See? He’s up for it too.”

Maruki: “I-I do appreciate it, but I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this…”

Shibusawa: “Oh, don’t sweat the details! C’mon, let’s go for a second round. We’ve gotta hit up the meat section! And the vegetables. And the beans!”

Shibusawa: “Yeah… maaan, am I gonna get an earful for piling on the pounds.”

Maruki: “Hm? By who?”

timrodresized: By all the people at the home he runs for middle-aged guys who can talk about nothing but what college was like.

Shibusawa: “My girlfriend - well, my fiance to be more exact. I’m getting married soon.”

timrodresized: Soon, he will graduate from ‘college guy’ to ‘wife guy’.

Maruki: “Ah, I see… wait - married!?”

Shibusawa: “Yep, married! Now you’re the only one left from school who’s still flying solo.”

Maruki: “…”

timrodresized: Maruki’s like “That’s not fair! I want to be a wife guy, but no one cares about all the stories about how I played football in college!”

Shibusawa: “Sorry to pry, but I feel like I need to ask. Are you still…? Actually, forget I said anything.”

Maruki: “She was my girlfriend back when I was still a student. Well, I was just too spineless at the time, and we broke up in the end.”

Shibusawa: “…”

Maruki: “It’s just that… I don’t feel ready to enter another relationship of that sort right now. Heh… this was supposed to be a celebration, yet I’ve thoroughly killed the mood. Sorry about that.”

Shibusawa: “No, no, it’s my bad for bringing it up in the first place. Why don’t we wrap things up here? I have to say, it’s really good to see you doing well - and with your paper almost finished, too!”

Shibusawa: “Hey, Kurusu-kun. Keep an eye on this guy for me, all right?”

timrodresized: Hold on a second. You were the one who convinced Maruki to be a therapist, and yet you think he has difficulty opening up to people? Isn’t that kind of a key trait for a therapist?

Maruki: “You’re talking about me like I’m some sullen kid… but I do need to express my appreciation properly. Thank you so much for helping someone like me make their dream come true, Kurusu-kun.”

Maruki: “Well, should we get going?”

Shibusawa: “Don’t forget to send me that paper, okay? I’m seriously going to review it for you.”

Maruki: “Haha, I won’t. I’ll be in touch soon.”

Maruki: “I was supposed to treat you out today, huh? Sorry things didn’t go as planned. Shibusawa’s always been quick to offer me his help. Well… maybe it’s because he knows I’m a little careless, though.”

Maruki: “…That’s true. He’s actually helped me out a lot. Running into Shibusawa was quite a coincidence, but a very lucky one. He was the best in the department when it came to peer reviews.”

Maruki: “Maybe you’re bringing me good luck with him, too…? Or maybe I’m doing too much magical thinking. Well, see you later.”

timrodresized: Tonight’s the night we do Tae’s Rank 10 romance scene. That will be with the rest of the romance scenes.

timrodresized: There’s a reading segment here I’m going to skip.

Usami: “Sine, cosine, and tangent. This is where a lot of people aren’t able to keep up. Why would you panic just from seeing a graph? I don’t get it.”

Usami: “A complicated formula gets condensed down to a single line… isn’t it simple and elegant? All of them have distinctive shapes that stimulate the imagination.”

Usami: “Now then, Kurusu-san. Take a look at these graphs.”

Usami: “That’s correct.”

Usami: “There are many other graphs with amusing names. For example, a devil’s curve is called that because it looks like a Chinese yo-yo called a diabolo. There’s nothing particularly diabolical about it otherwise.”

Usami: “Some people may thnk of math as an enemy like a devil… but there’s research that suggests that people who excel at math have higher incomes. If you’re shooting for a high salary, sometimes you need to be willing to fight demons.”

Morgana: “Honestly, I feel like fighting demons would be easier than trying to understand graphs like that…”

Kasumi: “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. Would you mind if I joined you for lunch?”

timrodresized: It’s probably obvious why this scene is here, but let me tell you, it makes the entire scene from the intro seem even dumber when we see it the second time around.

Kasumi: “Thank you. All right, let’s head to the roof.”

Kasumi: “Sorry to bring you here. This is something I oughtn’t really bring up around other people. Kurusu-senpai, are you still planning to continue on as the Phantom Thieves?”

Kasumi: “…Lately, I haven’t been hearing any positive gossip about the Phantom Thieves. Despite how much people cheered on your cause - even though they knew nothing about you or your friends…”

Kasumi: “All they do now is speak ill of the Phantom Thieves!”

Kasumi: “I know it’s not my place to say this, considering I turned down your offer to join and all… but this change in attitude is simply awful. They’re doing the exact same thing to you all that they did to me…”

Kasumi: “Yet you’re still going to keep at it? Why, Senpai?”

Kasumi: “Take care of something… mm. I see.”

Morgana: “Yeah… but don’t worry about us! There isn’t even a one in a million chance that my Phantom Thieves could ever lose!”

timrodresized: Yeah, so about that… I actually tried doing Sae’s shadow with Joker alone. I got her down to one hit left, and then died instantly to two hits for more than Joker’s max HP.

Kasumi: “I see… well, I won’t stop you. However… could I ask a favor? Or rather, could you promise me something?”

timrodresized: Remember when she shows up at the start and is like “Joker, you have to remember our promise!” like it’s something dramatic? No, this is all it is.

Kasumi: “I’m already beginning to look forward to it. So… please be careful out there. Oh, but I plan to keep my other promise I made with you, about the physical training.”

Kasumi: “Tomorrow - is that too sudden? Maybe we should train the day after tomorrow, then?”

Morgana: “Uh, but that day’s when…”

Kasumi: “Mm. I see. Ah! I haven’t eaten yet! Come on, Kurusu-senpai! You need to eat too!”

timrodresized: I like how Kasumi has the same ridiculously large bento from when they ate with Maruki that one time, and Joker just has uh… an unidentifiable loaf in a plastic bag.

timrodresized: Now that we’re done with that, it’s time for the last action of this update. Next time, we’ll finally see how we got here.

Maruki: “…There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about. I know this is a little personal, but… you remember how my former girlfriend came up the other day? Rumi?”

timrodresized: Maruki, that was yesterday.

Maruki: “We were even engaged, if you can believe that. She was so cheerful. I mean, she could get pretty aggressive - she was always kind of hot-headed - but always so kind, too.”

Maruki: “…She was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t deserve her, but… if we’d had our shot, my life would have been so much happier than it had ever been. But reality’s never that simple.”

timrodresized: Why does this sound like a monologue at the start of a generic action movie?

timrodresized: Wait, isn’t that just the plot of the 2009 film Law Abiding Citizen, only with his girlfriend’s family instead of his own being killed in a home invasion?

Maruki: “We were lucky Rumi’s injuries weren’t more severe. Her physical ones, at least. But the shock of the incident was too much. She had a mental breakdown.”

Maruki: “…We talked about that, didn’t we? How wounds of the heart aren’t as straightforward as physical ones? She never really recovered from what happened. Even after all this time.”

Maruki: “I…kind of lost myself in that pain for a while, too.”

Maruki: “…Sorry. When I saw her in that hospital bed, I made a vow. I swore that I’d do all I could to fight back against the unfairness of reality. If someone suffered like that, I’d help.”

Maruki: “…Like I said before, Rumi’s in a better mental place now. She’s happy. But that pain I felt back then - that’s how this project was born. And thanks to you, I’ve finally found the true goal of that research, too.”

timrodresized: That doesn’t sound at all creepy.

Maruki: “I don’t care how long it takes me. I will make my dream come true. For Rumi’s sake, of course… but for you too, Kurusu-kun. I… honestly don’t have the words to say what all this means to me. But I can at least say this.”

Maruki: “Thank you… so much. For everything. Thanks to you, I found my answer. And once it’s ready… I hope you’ll let me use it to help you find the happiness you deserve.”

timrodresized: Nope, no weird JRPG final boss shit going on here.

Maruki: “My path is clear now. I think this’ll probably be the last time I come to you about the paper.”

Maruki: “I know how you feel. It meant a lot to me, too. I’ll let you know when I finally finish that paper. When I do, I’ll have to thank you one last time. You helped me see my dream through - I owe you so much.”

Maruki: “But for now, I should uphold my end of the deal. I’ve got a really special one for you today. I think you’re ready for something on another level now!”

Maruki: “Also… there’s one more thing I want to tell you, but I’ll save it until I finish my paper. I just hope you can forgive me for it…”

timrodresized: We also get 5 max SP for Joker and a healing item.

timrodresized: Before you finish the night, you’re going to want to have a Persona that matches the element of each of your party members. If you have Ann, you want a fire-based Persona. If you have Haru, a psychic-based one.

timrodresized: We have nothing better to do, since most of our night confidants are finished and the one that isn’t (that being Iwai) isn’t available tonight.

Morgana: “So, your first opponent is a kung fu master… his attacks are apparently pretty ruthless. You’re both running low on health… you could probably win if you land a special move!”

timrodresized: I’m pretty sure they made this easier in Royal, because I distinctly remember having a very hard time with one of these on my base game run.

timrodresized: By the way, there’s a book that makes the games easier in Shinjuku. We’ll get to it. Maybe.

timrodresized: Next time, we finally get past the tutorial.

Ah yes, finally, we understand how Joker’s endured all the interrogating and leading questions, his promise to go on a date with Kasumi except we’re not using the date word and Joker’s got a boyfriend. Everything’s falling into place now.