Click Here for Update 95
: Welcome to the second update of cutscene hell. This update has a shitload of pointless dialog and minibosses we kill in a single turn. I’d recommend you skim it for context, but not read the entire thing.
: Joker makes a mental note to scold Yusuke for running like Naruto.
: “I guess that means there’s a Shido statue here too. How troublesome.”
: “Hm.. my ad-mice would be to pro-squeak cautiously.”
: “…”
: “Navi, my ad-mice would be-”
: “I believe she heard you the first time. Anyway, can we focus on the task at hand?”
: “Cheese… more cheese… is there any more cheese left!?”
: “We knew it was a trap but we walked right in anyway… aaaaand it doesn’t open from the inside.”
: “So, did the little meese enjoy their feast?”
: Wait, how did Futaba get in there to open the door? If she can just float over the floor to not be a mouse, why doesn’t she just turn the damn things off? Actually, given what we’re about to run into, it would’ve made a lot of sense to have a thing where if all the enemies on the floor are dead, Futaba can just fly over and hit the switch for you.
: “But jeez, who knew cheese could hypnotize? I seriously had no control…”
: “Indeed, nobody was able to stop themselves… it was simply too delectable. I must say though, the sight of all seven of us gorging ourselves, as mice, on a single piece of cheese.. what a spectacle.”
: “But, was that cheese… even safe to eat?”
: “I don’t think we have to worry about that, at least - I didn’t sense any danger from it.”
: “I actually feel somewhat refreshed having eaten that.”
: “Hmm.. then I vote that we have ourselves a nibble of we spot any more cheese! Now that we’re fed, let’s get moving!”
: I didn’t bother to check, but I think the cheese restores HP and SP. It’s mostly useful if you get spotted as a mouse, because it counts as a cutscene and will break pursuit.
: The hallway immediately after the cutscene is probably the most dangerous one, because you have two shadows that patrol the hallway. That door on the underside is locked and has to be opened from the far side.
: Dakini and Barong start showing up here, and I grab Barong so I can make Shiva later.
: More importantly, there’s a new treasure demon. Emperor’s Amulet is actually the Talisman of Charlemagne, a sapphire necklace that supposedly contained pieces of the True Cross and one of Mary’s hairs.
: Anyway, this area sucks.
: The entire floor consists of turning the mouse statues on…
: Then using the mouse to bypass locked doors…
: And then opening those doors from the other side before going all the way back to the switch. The whole thing feels like busy work in lieu of actual level design.
: You can encounter Narcissus here, but we don’t because we’re level 70 at this point and almost every shadow in the dungeon is within insta-kill range.
: There’s a locked chest with a sword for Yusuke in it that I only bother to grab because we don’t unlock his best melee weapon until after the last day.
: “Hm!? Look.”
: These paramilitary shadows replace the regular humanoid ones for the rest of the dungeon. They do shoot at you if you get spotted, but it doesn’t have any effect.
: “That seems to be a Shadow too. Be careful, guys.”
: “He looks way tougher than the other ones.. you think they’re tightenin’ security?”
: “It wouldn’t be surprising. We’ve taken down two targets, after all. Let’s proceed forward cautiously.”
: We basically have to go past this shadow to get to the next area. It’s two Forneus. They die in a single hit each.
: One thing I forgot to mention is that with the best armor in the game, enemies can barely hurt the party. While we’re ending most fights without ever taking a hit, we’ll see one with the next miniboss.
: SP recovery items are always welcome. This area is mostly big and empty just like the other ones were. Let’s just skip to the door that leads to progress.
: “He looks super dangerous! I don’t wanna get involved, even if he’s just some old cognitive thing!”
: “Eep..! W-We’re totally not making a mess, we swear! Who are you anyway!?”
: “Salt water!? Does that mean… whoa, hold on a sec!”
: Ryuji’s having a goddamn Jimmy Neutron brain blast.
: We ‘fight’ this dipshit four times. The first time is two Baphomets. The second time is three. The third time is four. The fourth time.. is actually fighting him.
: Sraosha fills on on Bless duty since I don’t have Uriel and we can’t make Metatron yet.
: Yusuke, we just slaughtered them in a single turn. If I had Metatron, that Makougaon probably would’ve done the job by itself.
: “That wasn’t funny, dammit! They were totally tryin’ to kill us!”
: “Maybe because we caused a scene at both the restaurant and the pool. Somebody has to clean up the mess. Wait a second… ‘clean up the mess’?”
: “Ohhh, that’s why they call him the ‘cleaner’! It’s 'cause he mops up any trouble that shows its face! That should make him pretty easy to find though. We just gotta disturb the peace somehow.”
: Futaba’s too young for it, but I’m picturing her eyes lighting up at the thought of a real-life reenactment of those Second Life raids 4chan used to do where they’d have a guy dressed as Mario jumping around and dumping so many particle effects that it’d crash entire blocks of the game.
: “But doing so would have an adverse effect on us finding the other letters of introduction. Let’s leave him for last and hurry over to the other two first.”
: I mean, that’d be non-linear dungeon design! We can’t have that!
: “In that case, our next target should be the TV station president in the entertainment hall ahead.”
: “Let’s go, Joker.”
: Oh look, a big empty room full of nothing but re-used assets. I suppose in the base game you could kind of understand this, because they pretty clearly shoved the base game out the door before it was ready due to the repeated delays becoming a joke on Twitter.
: You’d think in a full-price re-release that they’d be able to go back and fix this shit. Maybe remove some of the more pointless areas, or fix the ones that were there to be less big and empty… but we all know what Atlus’s slogan is. Can’t be helped.
: Here’s the best part. You see that staircase in the corner? This area is two floors! It’s two floors and the first floor is just a big empty room with a single shadow in it! Fuck!
: Once we go down the stairs, we find.. another big empty hallway. See that doorway on the right side of the minimap? Guess where that goes?
: If you answered “Yet another big empty room that has two floors for no apparent reason”, congratulations. You are now qualified for a job as Atlus’s level designer.
: “Then the slot-loving TV station president should be here. Let us search the area for him.”
: There’s NPCs we can talk to around here, but other than that, it’s a big featureless void.
: King Frost shows up here, and even though he’s not weak to Fire (he doesn’t have a weakness at all, actually) we can still kill him in a single hit with Mada.
: “Whoa there, Joker! We can’t have you skipping minibosses and maybe doing them on the way back! What do you think this is, Persona 1?”
: The dumb part is that you basically have to pass by this door to get to where the next miniboss is.
: “Maybe we’ll find that TV station prez we heard about in here.”
: “In that case, why don’t we try searching for him?”
: “This place isn’t too big, so spotting him should be easy. Be careful if you find him though!”
: “He’s the president of a TV station, isn’t he?”
: “He gives letters of introduction to executives of companies who are willing to sponsor his programs. That’s a difficult condition to meet…”
: “Wanna just beat it outta him?”
: We could, but then where would we get dozens of textboxes of pointless exposition from?
: “Let me handle this.”
: “For real? But…”
: “I’ll allow it. You’ve got this, Noir.”
: “Yes, Senpai!”
: “I am Haru Okumura, daughter of the president of Okumura Foods. I believe we sponsored you as well.”
: I thought the whole idea was that you had to use the codenames and.. you know what, forget it. This is a Hashino plot. Why do I even bother asking questions.
: “Cut off…”
: I can’t tell if this is just Hashino being on his bullshit again or if all this repetitive dialog about shit both we and the characters know already is from an earlier draft of the plot they never bothered to edit.
: I mean, if you assume that line about the cognitive Akechi in Sae’s palace is true, I could see an earlier draft of the plot where the party doesn’t know that the real Akechi is the one doing the murders, and to them it appears that someone has instead been implanting fake Akechis into people’s brains who then kill them.
: “…Won’t you please give me a letter of recommendation? Once our company recovers, I will arrange for us to cooperate with you in a sponsorship role.”
: “Thank you… very much…”
: “…Stop it.”
: We’ve got a fight against a Hanuman and two Jatayu.
: Satan knocks down Hanuman and freezes both of the Jatayu.
: The Hanuman gets exactly one attack off before Haru grinds him into paste, and it does around 20 damage.
: “I assume as part of the media, you have knowledge about quite a few important topics. We will not take your life, as long as you share the knowledge that you’ve kept from the public.”
: I wasn’t really reading this when I first ran through it, and now I’m just as confused as some of you as to what the fucking deal is here. Is this actually the TV executive’s shadow?
: Honestly, it doesn’t matter. None of this dungeon matters. They could have cut all of it apart from the boss fight we’ll run into before we leave and it would have been exactly the same.
: This is Hashino’s feeble attempt to make Kaneshiro relevant.
: “Shido and Kaneshiro were connected?”
: “I understand now..”
: “Hey, you were forcin’ the news to be about Shido and Akechi all the time, right? I’m sick of ‘em! …Wait, this guy’s not a real person. Tellin’ him ain’t gonna do shit for us.”
: “Come on, we have to take down Shido himself!”
: “Oh, certainly not to this extent.. but it is important to note that he was the mastermind behind the recent commotion. Getting captured must have wounded his pride irreparably. Such things happen often to insurgent leaders.”
: “May I butt in for a second?”
: “The Phantom Thieves may have laid low since then… but they must not be excused! I don’t care if they come after me! For the victims of their evil deeds, and for their families..”
: “…My apologies. I didn’t mean to get so worked up.”
: “I will do the best I can. …Oh, but I do have to study for my college entrance exams. I might not be able to promise that…”
: “I wanted people to rely on me… I wanted to be needed… I devoted myself to my studies, acted as an honor student, and made my name as an ace detective. And thanks to the Nav app and the Persona bestowed upon me by the gods..”
: “I managed to dispose of any who got in my way. Though it took some time to finally do so… all that remains is to tell him.”
: “True… it did make me feel somewhat dizzy… just a little though. Perhaps my mind was worked up due to the major task I had undertaken…”
: Someone’s phone goes off in the background.
: “…A phone?”
: “A-Ah, sorry about that. I’m not bothered. Just make sure to turn it off when you go to the movies!”
: Just a lot of blank hallways, really.
: “We’re leaving the cleaner for last, so we just got that IT president guy left.”
: “We don’t have any clues about him yet though… either way, let’s proceed onward. We still haven’t gotten a full grasp of this ship’s layout.”
: We can now go through that door Futaba complained at us for trying to go through earlier. Guess what? It’s another big, empty hallway!
: We’re going to take this bottom-left door first, because the second will seed is here.. but also because we need to go this way to turn on the mouse statues.
: This is yet another mouse-door puzzle.
: Now that we have the statues on, we can go through this duct to get back to the big empty main room.
: We can then use this duct to bypass the locked door to the next area.
: There’s a second statue switch here (it’s the checkmark on the minimap) and we can unlock this door to make a shortcut.. but there’s little reason to do so, given that the only time we have to backtrack in this dungeon it’s to a spot that’s right next to a save room.
: And.. another hallway. Clearly the level designers were taking from the Turok 2 school of level design.
: “Wait, you’re the one who attacked us, remember!?”
: We can kill two Baphomets in a single turn, so killing three isn’t exactly a huge challenge.
: “We caused no trouble whatsoever, yet were met with the same end result…”
: I found out earlier today that there is a private server for SMT Imagine, and I gave it a shot. It’s not something I can LP because it doesn’t work with OBS.
: “And on top of that, he up and disappeared again!”
: It’s a very interesting game and by interesting I mean kinda questionably designed. It was originally an F2P MMO with a cash shop, but that’s all been stripped out by the private server operators.
: It uses a lot of elements from SMT 1 - most of the music is taken from SMT 1’s soundtrack, and it more or less takes place in an alternate version of the post-apocalypse in SMT 1.
: The start kinda sucks because you’re at the mercy of the AI that controls your demon. Sometimes it works, and other times you watch your starting Cerberus get pummeled to death by a Pixie. This continues to happen later in the game because most of the time you either specialize in physical or gun attacks and things can null those. Even magic users usually only take one kind of magic.
: It’s also only partially translated, since the Japanese version went about two years beyond where the English one did before being shut down in 2016.
: “We should ignore him if our actions have no actual impact on the results. For now, let’s focus on searching for the IT company president. I hope there are clues somewhere…”
: Yes, ignoring Hashino is generally a good idea.
: Yep, it’s another rat maze.
: Oberon shows up here, but dies quickly to… well, everything.
: At the end of the rat maze is another elevator. This is the one time we need to backtrack.
: “And without any particularly useful information about the IT company president…”
: “He almost never leaves his room! Nobody’s even seen him around!”
: In case you’re wondering if there’s any NPCs or anything in the maze, the answer is no. They haven’t asked anyone about the IT guy.
: “Hm. If he ‘almost never’ leaves, does that mean there are times that he does in fact leave?”
: “Wouldn’t he have to head out to go to the bathroom? That’s how it was for me in my room!”
: “But there are restrooms in the rooms here… what about meals?”
: “Just one call and food gets delivered to your room.”
: “I think you’re right. Though this place is just a cognition, it has restaurants and bars as well. If the IT company president never leaves his room, somebody must be delivering the food to him.”
: “Ohhh, so you think we should get info at the restaurants too! Nice idea, Joker! Oh, and Queen!”
: We now need to head back to the restaurant we fought Ooe in.
: “Um, is it possible to have meals delivered to my room?”
: “Ah, you mean room service. You absolute fucking moron.”
: “Aha! So, is there one room in particular that always orders food delivery?”
: So wait, one thing I never thought of - is the waiter some kind of VIP as well? Like, he’s the best waiter in Japan or something? That’s about the only way I can imagine a waiter giving enough of a shit to check a boarding pass.
: “O-Oh um, we’ve been asked to make a delivery. It’s to the president of an IT company, I believe.”
: Hold on. Wasn’t this guy here when we turned Ooe into a fine red mist? How could he possibly mistake the party for a delivery service?
: “He apparently never leaves his room, but Mr. Shido has given us direct orders about this… now then, this is a highly confidential matter, so we must take it to him ourselves.”
: And another thing. Is this waiter a super shadow as well? Like, does he have deeply-held regrets about fucking up people’s orders on purpose or something? I have so many questions.
: “Well done, Queen! Just as I’d expect from you!”
: “Isn’t this pretty close? I suppose it’s just upstairs.”
: “It seems to be above the side deck we passed through earlier. Is there a way up somewhere?”
: “Honestly, guys, I doubt this is gonna be any use. If it were me, I’d never open the door.”
: “Well, that’s no good! What are we gonna do!?”
: “If only there was a way in besides through the door…”
: “In any case, should we head back to the side deck? Not that we’ll be able to get in from there…”
: We need to go back to where we encountered the yakuza guy. The fastest way to do this is to use the save room in the first area to warp to the one there. From there, we take a left instead of a right.
: “I mean, we ARE phantom thieves. We can use places that normal guests don’t have access to.”
: We could go this way, but instead we actually want to turn around because there’s a platform on the other side.
: I’m also not sure why this boat has these random platforms jutting out from the side with eight foot gaps between them. What purpose do they serve? This is fucking level design 101 shit.
: This area is just a hallway leading to the third will seed room.
: “I’m getting that feeling again - that’s a you-know-what all right. We’re in for a tough battle first, though. You ready?”
: This is a fight that’s more annoying than actually dangerous. Kali has the same MO that Girimehkala did - she uses Wage War to berserk the party.. except she doesn’t repel physical, so that’s kind of a pointless exercise that only makes the fight take longer.
: Eventually the entire party is berserk. This might be more annoying if Ann and Haru didn’t already have their best melee weapons.
: Futaba gives the party a free Concentrate, and between Satan and Haru, Kali’s fucked.
: “Whew… thank goodness we didn’t get you-know-what’d.”
: “Yeah! And now that the path’s clear, let’s grab that you-know-what!”
: Should be enough to get us into Xibalba.
: Anyway, we can hit the left side now to get to where the next miniboss is. You can drop right down from the will seed area to get here.
: “I’m gonna go!”
: “By yourself?”
: You know, if they were going to do this whole “There’s five targets and each one corresponds to one of the party members” bit they could have at least designed the fucking level around that.
: “He’ll be on guard if we all go together… plus, it’s IT stuff! This is my time to shine!”
: “Should we leave it to her?”
: “It’s been left to me! It’s like that show where the kid goes shopping alone for the first time. Hehe, this is gonna be tough.”
: “She’s feelin’ good enough to joke around, so maybe this’ll be fine after all?”
: “Just yell if things get dangerous, okay?”
: “W-Well the door’s locked and you weren’t answering! How else am I supposed to get in here? Oh, but I get how you feel! There’s totes nothing better than relaxing in your own room!”
: I imagine he’s saying that because those women standing behind him are a lot like the ship - they don’t actually exist.
: “You’re an IT guy, right? I can tell we talk the same language!”
: “Hehehe.. this little guy caught your attention, huh? I made it myself!”
: Add laptops to the pile of things Hashino doesn’t understand. While it’s theoretically possible to build a laptop from scratch, most places don’t sell components because the prebuild market is so lucrative.
: “Wanna see the benchmarks? It can pump out some awesome numbers. Although normally I just use this one as a sub-processor when I’m hacking into a tough system.”
: “Hehehe… ever heard of Medjed?”
: “Try not to be surprised by this. Actually, be surprised. I am Medjed! I’m the one who took down the fake!”
: “Don’t believe me, huh? Here, this is proof.”
: Can we just hurry up and get to the fight already?
: “If you want my skills, I’ll need a letter of introduction.”
: “Huh? Y-You prepared it?”
: “Because I’m a Phant- I-It was just because I couldn’t forgive someone using the Medjed name without my permission. So, why’d you send Medjed after the Phantom Thieves?”
: “That’s why…?”
: God dammit, game! We already know this shit! Fuck!
: “You little…”
: “…What a third-rate fool. Not only are your skills third-rate, but you stink worse than a third-rate person. Don’t treat me like we’re equals. I’m gonna reform society!”
: “That’s right! It’s because I’m a member of the Phantom Thieves! Picking on the weak and calling that innovative? Looks like I just gotta ban the guy at the root of all this.. Shido!”
: “Now, you’re gonna give me that letter of introduction!”
: “H-How about a computer competition for it!?”
: Here’s what I hate about that last line. There was an interview I read years ago with one of the producers for NCIS, because I think they had done an episode involving video games and it had a bunch of shit in it that was obviously wrong to anyone who knew anything about the subject.
: The producer was like “Yeah we have to dumb down the nerd shit because our audience is like 60 years old and doesn’t understand any of that.” That’s what it feels like Hashino is doing, even though he knows (or should know) that his audience is much younger and much more tech-literate.
: Seriously though, ‘computer competition’? Where the fuck did he come up with that? What would that even be?
: “G-Guys!”
: “Well, now that we know he has one, this should be the easiest way to get it!”
: If you’re wondering why Haru has 1 HP, it’s because the Oberon managed to hit her with Hama.
: “Making that fake Medjed wasn’t the only bad thing you did, right? I want to hear your biggest secret.”
: “Shido.. what the hell was he researching?”
: “No matter what it was, we won’t let him abuse it!”
: “We’ve only made it this far thanks to you.”
: “I’m honored to hear that.”
: “Now then.. I have a favor to ask of you.”
: “What might that be?”
: “It’s about the loyal customers of our mental shutdown business. How about you dispose of all the ones you think suspicious?”
: “Right at this moment? But the election is coming up soon.”
: “Correct. The earlier the better.”
: “Why so suddenly? Did something happen?”
: “Nothing in particular. But if something were to happen, it would already be too late.”
: “I can understand why you might be nervous, but why not stay calm and hold off until after the election?”
: “I’d like to take out all of the trash before my inauguration as prime minister of this nation. For the sake of absolute victory, I need all roots of anxiety to be pulled as soon as possible.”
: I’d like to talk about this conversation as well. This is fucking nothing dialog. Let’s just look at what they’re actually saying. You have Shido telling Akechi to kill all the people in his shadowy cabal, and then an exchange of “Why?” “Because.” that repeats three times in slightly different language.
: “Anxiety? You’ve never mentioned such things before now. Um.. Shido-san?”
: “Just do as I ask. I’ll be counting on you.”
: “…This is all too sudden. Could it be…?”
: Yes, we’re going to fight Akechi again. I’m going to save that for the next update because I have a lot to say about it and it’s very long.
: “Just that cleaner dude left then. Wanna go cause a scene somewhere and lure him out?”
: “As I’ve already said, we should avoid doing that if we can.”
: “But we’ve gone everywhere on the map. Is there any place we haven’t checked yet?”
: “Hm? I don’t recall passing by such a place.”
: “Wait, I found something… the engine room. Remember how you were wondering about that smoke earlier, Skull?”
: “Oh yeah.. where was that?”
: It’s right by where we jumped up to go to the IT guy’s room.
: “I’m getting a reading from inside, but I can’t tell if it’s him.”
: “Huh? We ain’t gonna be able to get in like this. You wanna try forcin’ it open, Joker?”
: “But his men are with him too. Exiting here will land us directly in front of them. There will be no chance of escape at that point. What should we do, Joker?”
: “Very well. We shall jump in!”
: “Crap, this guy might be just a cognition, but he’s damn scary!”
: “Again? This better be the last time!”
: Oh no, four Baphomets. Whatever will we do? I also find it weird that they do the miniboss thing of not identifying the demon even if you have them in the compendium.
: “Dammit, we’re not lettin’ him escape! Let’s take that letter by force if we gotta!”
: Naturally, they have to throw one more vent at you. You know, for old times sake.
: Joker throws his coat to the ground and tears his vest off, revealing a tattoo of a fox on his back. “The Boyfriend Clan.”
: “…Clan? Does he mean like, yakuza clan?”
: “Wait, does he ‘clean up’ problems by making people disappear?”
: “Crap… is he really yakuza?”
: How did it take you all this long to figure that out!?
: “It seems that bastard Shido has close ties to the underground…”
: “How are we supposed to get the letter of introduction from him? Do we have to prove our worth?”
: “As I expected…”
: “Umm… actually, we’re here to suggest a tattoo design for you.”
: “Th-This guy is great at drawing.. h-he’s an artist!”
: Yusuke’s ink can only truly shine when on the skin of a boyfriend. This guy is probably single.
: “I thought you’d be able to do it, Yusuke…”
: “Yusuke, draw something! Art’s art, ain’t it!?”
: Codenames?
: “…Very well. May I at least decide what I draw?”
: “A phoenix… I’d rather something else…”
: Yusuke’s secret boyfriend yakuza tattoo is a phoenix, that’s why.
: “I am not all talk. I can draw anything you want. Bring me a brush and a piece of paper.”
: “Is it a monster? It has some kinda crazy aura…”
: “A truly… explosive piece…”
: “This is my perception of a phoenix.”
: “There’s no way this is gonna work..”
: “Thank you.”
: “It seems like… it went well?”
: “Well then, I request a letter of introduction.”
: “He wants to recruit you!?”
: Yusuke could, you know, just say yes because this is a construct and doesn’t exist outside of Shido’s brain.
: “I decline.”
: “I must decide my own path as an artist. I will not receive aid from others any longer. Now if you understand, hand over the letter. Otherwise we’ll have to take it by force. By the way, you’re more feral pigeon than phoenix.”
: Yeah I mean, who could possibly think that a lengthy cutscene could be enough to resolve this dumb shit?
: We start this fight in the normal way - charge/concentrate and then thermopylae.
: You saw that correctly. He hit Yusuke for a whopping 9 damage.
: “You’re letting us go?”
: “That was an unexpected response for a cognitive creation…”
: So wait, was the yakuza guy not a super-shadow? What about the IT guy? Make up your fucking mind, Hashino!
: “Politicians never get too close to their shady connections. They must have only been linked monetarily.”
: “That must be it.”
: “Well, we finally have all five. We need to use these to get into the main assembly hall, right?”
: “Yes, and I believe that will be where we find the Treasure. We’ve been to most other places to gather the letters - there’s almost no doubt about it.”
: “We’re gonna take his Treasure, no matter what!”
: “As I’m sure you all know, the importance of this particular card is unlike any that’s come before. Once we send it, our opponents will know that Joker, who they presumed dead, is in fact alive. We will be putting our backs to the wall.”
: SMART GIRL.
: “If we lose, our lives will truly be over.”
: “We can’t let that happen, can we!?”
: “Hell yeah!”
: “Then it’s decided.”
: “The real question is, how and where do we send the calling card?”
: “How about we make it super flashy? Our whole big plan was all for this moment, you know!”
: “Actually, it must be theatrically done. A minor leak will only be crushed by Shido’s influence.”
: “Maybe it doesn’t have to be in letter form this time.”
: “Hehe.. it’s finally my turn to steal the spotlight.”
: “…What’s the matter?”
: “Heeheehee.. it’s nothing.”
: Next time, we fight Akechi. We’ll also fuse Metatron and Lucifer, then fight Shido. We’ll also get to one of the best songs in the game.