Click Here for Update 102
: We’re finally here. The last boss of the base game.
: “Why do you mere humans still dare oppose me!?”
: “Stop acting like you’re some kinda god! You’re just a Treasure! Shut up and let us destroy you!”
: “Fools… do you still not understand? Your actions shall not save a single soul.”
: Wait… what was the point of Yaldabaoth continuing to appear as Igor here? They all know what it looks like.
: “What is that supposed to mean!?”
: “Are you saying… that’s you!?”
: “…And?”
: “We don’t let what others think hold us down anymore!”
: “That’s right!”
: Yaldabaoth starts by healing itself.
: “Our opponent knows that too though. It’ll try and stop us if we go straight for them! We’ll need to send someone in to cut the lines. Then while they’re out, everyone else will have to keep attacking to distract the Holy Grail!”
: “First, we must deal with those red supply lines.”
: I’m not sure what happens if you don’t send anyone.
: Yaldabaoth gains a new attack in the form of this big sweeping laser that hits everyone for Almighty damage.
: Anyway, you know the drill by now. Charge/Concentrate, Thermopylae, attack, repeat.
: This is a re-used animation from the Kamoshida fight that I forgot to include in the update where we fought him, because that’s the kind of quality you can expect from a Hashino game.
: Most people wouldn’t consider this to be that major, but I hate this because it makes it seem like the party hasn’t really grown since the Kamoshida fight. It makes sense for Ryuji to struggle to get up the pillar in the Kamoshida fight because at that point they’re a ragtag band of teenagers trying to fight their gym teacher.
: At this point though, Joker can do ridiculous acrobatic shit without even batting an eye. They should’ve changed it in Royal to have Yusuke (or whoever you send) grappling hook onto the thumb directly.
: Meanwhile, we hit what I’m pretty sure is the damage wall for this part of the fight.
: I mean sure, Yaldabaoth is a god, but Yusuke is a boyfriend carrying a sword made from the body of a 12th century Japanese warlord.
: How the hell is it that Yusuke can jump like, halfway across the room to hit the veins, but can’t clear that hand in one go?
: “It can’t heal itself anymore! This’ll be a head-to-head fight from now on! Take it down!”
: Yaldabaoth charges, and at this point I have to interact with game mechanics and guard. Fortunately, Futaba heals Ann for me - but even if she dies, we have plenty of revival items and three party members with Diarahan or better.
: It manages to hit Joker for 133 damage despite him guarding, having Lucifer up, and having the magic damage reduction from his armor.
: Thankfully, we have Mediarahan. No big deal. Not pictured: Yaldabaoth hitting Ann with one of its lasers for 300+ damage.
: Joker refreshes Thermopylae. He won’t get to make use of it.
: I wish hitting Level 80 was this easy in Persona 1 and Innocent Sin.
: I can’t get over how Yaldabaoth has jazz hands.
: Even in the final cutscene, they can’t get shit on model.
: Clearly, the animators hated their job about as much as I hate mine.
: Meet Yaldabaoth’s true form, or as I refer to it, G-Gundam. The G stands for Gnosticism.
: “This is crazy! It’s like a building!”
: “It was already huge back when it was the Holy Grail…”
: “You kiddin’!? This is just some kinda rigged game you started!”
: “That doesn’t mean humans are evil though!”
: “Bullshit! You’re just forcin’ your selfish ideas on people!”
: “For a god, you’re pretty damn prejudiced!”
: “If this is all for the sake of humanity, wouldn’t being beaten by humans satisfy you?”
: I don’t think it’s a masochist, Haru.
: “Ngh…”
: “Rgh… that thing’s on a totally different level!”
: “Can we defeat something like him?”
: “This is the best possible outcome! We’re fighting against a god who’s not holding anything back, right? What bigger target could there be for the Phantom Thieves to tackle?”
: “Although… it’s still way too big for my liking.”
: “All right, I’ll give the navigation everything I’ve got!”
: “We can do this if we all work together!”
: “Let’s take him down!”
: “Crowning our glory by defeating a god… now that is true art.”
: “We basically just gotta beat that thing, right!?”
: Like a lot of the bosses we’ve fought, we’re going to be straight up skipping a lot of phases. Yaldabaoth is extremely scripted for the first couple of turns.
: Yaldabaoth only has two attacks by itself - the first is Arrows of Light (which we saw in the first scripted fight before we entered the Vortex World Persona 1 Ripoff uh… Mementos Reality.
: On Yaldabaoth’s second turn, it grows a gun. The gun repels Gun and Wind but is neutral to everything else and has only 1500 HP.
: Oh no.
: Yusuke sees the rays of pure horny aimed at Joker and pushes him out of the way.
: Uh-oh. That can’t be good. Mechanically, all it does is disable whoever it hits for one turn. Psychologically, though…
: Yoshitsune fucking clowns on Yaldabaoth. This is an uncharged Hassou Tobi - a charged one will instantly wipe out the gun.
: If the gun is left alive, it will use both Distorted Lust and a second attack called Distorted Avarice that inflicts Hunger for one turn. It also has a re-named One Shot Kill and a gun attack called Shoot Up that hits three targets.
: Joker sounds the air horn, but it is too late. The horny is already too strong.
: The bell repels Fire and Psychic. Like the gun, it also has two status effects: Distorted Vanity (which renders one target weak to everything for a turn, like Madarame’s ability) and Distorted Envy, which… is actually a little weird.
: Distorted Envy inflicts a status effect called Jealousy, which is like Brainwash but will only cause the party member it hits to attack if a healing skill or buff is used on anyone but the person with Jealousy. I’m not sure how this works for multi-target spells.
: In addition, the bell can do a renamed Marakunda (defense down) and a renamed Marakaja (defense up) on Yaldabaoth and the other arms. It has a single-target attack that I’ve never seen it use.
: Joker kills the gun and brings the bell to low HP with another uncharged Hassou Tobi. No one else can do much - Yusuke is still horny, Ann can’t hit the bell due to it repelling fire, and Makoto spends the turn Concentrating.
: The sword is by far the most annoying of Yaldabaoth’s arms. It repels Physical, Gun and Electric (though it did not repel Gun in the base game, which is the only real change to this fight in Royal).
: This isn’t a big deal if you’re using Yoshitsune because Yoshitsune nulls physical.
: This is why we do not want to keep the sword up for very long. In addition to Distorted Gluttony, it also has both single-target and multi-target physical attacks. Fortunately, I don’t think it can keep using Distorted Gluttony - it stayed alive for a couple of turns and didn’t use it again.
: “Another one!? It looks like this is how his main body attacks… he may keep switching up his moves! Let’s be careful!”
: Joker spends the HP to Hassou Tobi anyway, killing off the bell and bringing Yaldabaoth to half HP. Looking back, I probably should’ve taken the time to charge because it would’ve killed off the main body faster.
: The book repels Ice and Nuclear, and is Yaldabaoth’s main form of attack. It has access to all third-tier spells and will attempt to use them to hit weaknesses.
: It also has an attack we won’t be seeing called Distorted Pride, which causes it to go into a counter stance for one turn. Hitting it in counter stance causes it to retaliate by draining the attacker’s SP.
: Instead, it will always use Distorted Wrath. This is a mistake on its part - Distorted Wrath is your typical “berserk” status effect that raises damage but lowers defense.
: Ann is Concentrated, and Futaba gives us a full-party attack buff. Watch this shit.
: Joker uses Hassou Tobi again, nearly killing off the book in one go despite not having a charge.
: Meanwhile, Ann completely fucks up the book and sword and brings the main body down to under a quarter of its max HP. This triggers Yaldabaoth’s final phase. None of the arms got more than the one turn they’re guaranteed to get when they first spawn.
: Once all the arms are dead, Yaldabaoth revives them to max HP.
: At this point, Yaldabaoth will cancel all of its other attacks and only use Divine Apex, followed two turns later by Rays of Control until the fight ends.
: I’m not sure if it’s possible to cancel the attack by destroying all the arms, but we come pretty close.
: I have Yusuke sacrifice himself, because his best physical skill is multi-target. If you charge it, it’s basically a mini Hassou Tobi.
: We have one turn until Rays of Control, but Yaldabaoth is very low on HP so I go for another Hassou Tobi.
: This really shouldn’t be any surprise to anyone given that this is exactly what happens in Persona 4.
: “If you’re really a god, you should be guiding humans to your ideals! You’re destroying them because you can’t do that, aren’t you? So that you can flaunt your own existence.”
: “Flaunt your own existence” is probably the most dumb anime bullshit phrase I’ve read this week. What’s funny is that when I was going through Youtube videos to do that bad ending update, there were people INSISTING that “The Japanese script is totally better, you guys! It’s the localizers’ fault!”
: “That’s why you were observing us! You had to because the reaction of the ‘masses’ worried you!”
: “That sounds about right.”
: “I don’t know how long you’ve lived, but you’re the perfect example of a pain-in-the-ass old man!”
: “You find people like that everywhere.”
: “Dammit, I can’t see anything!”
: “Do you want to erase us from this world that much!?”
: “G-Guys!”
: Are you ready for the game to do the dumbest, most shounen battle anime ass bullshit yet?
: “If we lose… the world is…”
: “I need to… get back up…”
: “I can’t… go on…”
: “Is this it?”
: You can hear people chanting something in the background, but it’s in Japanese and not subtitled and I am not putting on the godawful fuckshit English dub.
: If you’d like a concise version of Yaldabaoth’s bullshit, you can find it here. It’s even set to music.
: “Human hope is a desire too! You better not underestimate it! The Phantom Thieves will yield to no one, no matter who they are! Even if only one of us remains, we’ll get back up and fight to the very end.”
: “And we’ll definitely… definitely… take the world!”
: Oh no, it’s a Golden Alpac- wait a second, Yaldabaoth really is just the fucking Golden Alpaca. He’s what happens if you shove the LEMONADE version and the remade version together.
: You might be asking “Wait, doesn’t this mean everyone now knows that Morgana can talk?” and the answer is no because this ending is a self-retcon.
: Remember the end of Okami? Those were better times, even though I know Okami was not the first thing to do this.
: Mishima looking around like “Wait… am I really the dipshit here?”
: This shot looks like a YIIK cutscene with a higher budget behind it.
: Mishima’s model was not meant to do any of the things it is currently doing.
: “…I sure am. Is the same true for you too?”
: You could’ve just done “Are you, too?”
: “Pretty much. Looks like it’s not just us though.”
: I swear this game needs a fucking Richter mode. Also, I’m pretty sure if I was ever on a giant sky pedestal attempting to kill God and had everyone I know cheering me on I would in fact die of fucking embarrassment.
: See, back when I was in high school, we killed God in private. It was the meta at the time - you’d lure God behind the gym and then stab him before he could go full on end boss.
: Yoshida here reminds me a lot of when you see senators in the US questioning tech executives over shit they do not fucking understand. You know, your Ted Wheeler “Series of Tubes” speech.
: If there was a Richter mode, Shinya’s thing would absolutely be climbing Yaldabaoth and stealing the gun. Would it shrink? Fuck no, he’d just use it as-is because he’s like 12 and still has full anime protagonist power to wield weapons bigger than he is.
: “It’s you guys’ fault I don’t know when to quit either. Get back up! Don’t lose to that thing!”
: “No matter what anyone says, I believe in you guys! Go for it, Phantom Thieves!”
: Sae’s ultimate attack in Richter Mode would be asking questions so stupid and irrelevant that they drain the enemy’s HP and SP. She’d basically be Daisoujou from Nocturne.
: “No one wants you to rule over them! Isn’t that right, Akira!?”
: “I’ve made up my mind. I will see my justice through for the sake of protecting what I care about.”
: Oh boy, more anime gibberish.
: “Morgana…”
: “…The same goes for you guys too! If you’ve decided to take the world from him, don’t compromise your ideals to the very end!”
: “Let’s defeat him together!”
: They’re praying for this LP to be over so I can go to… actually, I’m not so sure. I might do Soul Hackers but four SMT games in a row is a bit much.
: “They’re prayin’ there’s no place for someone like you in this world!”
: “Give that evil god his final warning, Akira!”
: “You messed with the wrong John Persona!”
: If I had the skills to do so, I would’ve photoshopped “Has this boss fight gone on too long?” over the poll question. I do not.
New Persona: Satanael
Origin: Gnosticism
First Appearance: Soul Hackers
Satanael is essentially the Gnostic version of Lucifer - he’s the angelic form of Satan prior to his rebellion against God. This version is based on a Gnostic tradition in which he was a servant of Yaldabaoth before realizing that Yaldabaoth was not the true God and rebelling against him, granting humanity knowledge that would allow them to end Yaldabaoth’s rule.
: Satanael is Joker’s ultimate Persona, and is only fusable in New Game Plus… meaning he shows up here, and then fucks off forever. He is a special fusion of Arsene, Anzu, Ishtar, Satan, Lucifer and Michael.
: He starts with a trait that is effectively Everything Amp, and gains Tyrant’s Mind (which is Everything Boost). The only downside is that he doesn’t learn Morning Star.
: As a Persona, Satanel is kind of mediocre - especially when compared to Izanagi no Okami. He’s basically Lucifer with better resistances and Victory Cry.
: The only reason to fuse him is for the Caroline and Justine/Lavenza superbosses, and for Joker’s ultimate melee weapon - though again, when are we ever going to use a basic physical attack?
: “Man, it’s huge!”
: “What an immense power…! No way… is it a Persona…?”
: There’s one input left in the base game.
: “What better way is there for a finale as a Trickster! Joker, we’re entrusting our strength and the people’s hopes to you! Put an end to this!”
: I mean, I dunno, maybe ending the boss fight when we did nothing but spam Hassou Tobi until Yaldabaoth died?
: Oh, come on! I could win this without even using Satanael!
: Joker has given up on his big flashy anime gun made from Lucifer and opts for the ultimate weapon: the legendary Deagle-Brand Deagle.
: I’m pretty sure the rifle model that Satanel uses in this cutscene was reworked into Kasumi’s gun.
: “Ain’t that a Treasure? Right, Mona?”
: “Thanks for everything, gang.”
: “Mona-chan?”
: “Mona?”
: “Hey…”
: “Thanks to you guys, I was able to complete my duty…”
: “Everything was thanks to you, wasn’t it, Morgana?”
: “I got to be useful for humans that I admired so much. Nothing could make me happier. This place will soon disappear too…”
: “What is this?”
: It’d be neat if the end was “Yeah so even though we killed God that doesn’t make the giant bones everywhere or the several feet of weird watery blood in the streets go away.”
: Man, the hospitals are gonna be FULL of people with horrible glass cuts.
: YIIK never happened. YIIK never happened. YIIK never happened. The Allansons fell into obscurity after how bad Two Brothers did. There never was a Ni no Kuni 2 because Fred left to become the CEO of a major anime studio…
: God dammit, it’s not working!
: Why is it that this is the only cutscene where the animators could be bothered to make it on-model? Also I love the way Haru puts her mask on top of her hat. That shit’s gonna stay put for maybe ten seconds tops.
: I missed a capture here, so I’ll just put it in myself.
: “Soon, a new world will come.”
: Somewhere in the ruins of Sumaru City, Tatsuya calls bullshit.
: He’s going to get a contract with whoever it is that makes Pretty Cure to be the next season’s magical pet.
: Morgana died on the way back to his home planet.
: “Mona…”
: “The Meta-Nav… it’s gone… Mementos must have disappeared too…”
: Remember this line for… actually, probably the next update. I haven’t really seen much of the expansion dungeon.
: “We can’t see Mona anymore… can we?”
: “It’s fine. I already know the answer.”
: “What’re you all so gloomy for? Mona would laugh at us for it…”
: “That reminds me, what about the public? Were we able to change their hearts?”
: “It’s kinda hard to tell.”
: “I wonder how things will go… I hope they go well…”
: “Let’s believe in the adults. Sis promised us, after all.”
: “From here on out’s the prosecutor’s job, huh…”
: “If we can’t enter the Metaverse, that means we’ve been relieved of being Phantom Thieves.”
: “It feels a bit sad…”
: “What’d I just say? We gotta stop bein’ so gloomy! Think about that insane ass we just kicked!”
: “You’re right… we should be celebrating with a victory toast.”
: “Well, we’re still high schoolers, so we can’t really drink a real toast…”
: “Oh, what if we tried something else? Like, what do athletes do after a win?”
: Haru: “What if we tried bribing the police to not enforce underage drinking laws?”
: “You mean a huddle? We could all circle up and give a victory shout together.”
: “Sounds good - except for the part where we’re in the dead center of Shibuya, surrounded by tons of people.”
: “What!? You wanna do it here an’ now!?”
: “C’mon, Ryuji, get with the program.”
: “I too am disappointed. After all we’ve been through together, you’ve nothing left to lose with this.”
: Except dignity.
: “Hey, speak for yourself! I’ve got tons of shit I could lose! Fine… let’s get this over with. Everyone, put your hands in!”
: “Yeah, uh, can we hurry this up? I don’t mind yelling, so long as we make it quick.”
: “Well, this celebration’s going great… whatever. Joker, you lead off with this.”
: “No way!? Only the leader can do this kinda stuff right! When he gives our victory cry, we all follow with a super-loud ‘Yeah!’ got it? Alright… one… two…”
: “You may be right there. The more I think about it, the more pressure I realize we were really under. I hope we can relax at least a little now.”
: “…Brr, it’s chilly!”
: “No wonder it’s cold.”
: “Is this what they call a white Christmas?”
: “It’s still Christmas Eve.”
: “Christmas… I completely forgot about it…”
: “Anyhow, we’ll have to see what happens for now. We should probably break for today. Let’s meet at Leblanc tomorrow, and have a final meeting on the situation.”
: “Yeah, let’s do that.”
: “…Hey! It’ll be Christmas, so why don’t we do a last celebration party!?”
: “I like the sound of that! There better not be anyone that’s got plans already!”
: “It’s settled then!”
: “Make sure you persuade Boss to let us reserve the store for the party.”
: I’m not sure if Sojiro still remembers the whole God thing or not. Probably going to lean no on that.
: “We will be counting on you. Well then, see you all again tomorrow.”
: And that’s that. This is where I turned the game off and dropped it when I did the base game. There’s still a little more of 12/24, but this update’s already pretty long… you know what, let’s keep going. Just for a little bit.
: “…Can I talk to you for a minute? First off, thank you for taking my request. With your actions, I can only hope that public opinion changes… it will change, won’t it?”
: “…True. It was social reform on a scale no one has ever accomplished before. But I believe that it will. Shido confessed to a variety of crimes. We can arrest him on those charges.”
: “…The problem lies in proving him guilty. It’d be difficult unless the correlation between the Metaverse and the mental shutdowns is made. …I’ll be blunt.”
: Wait, WHAT!? How the fuck does that make any kind of sense? Even if Joker testified, the Metaverse is gone! What’s he going to do, pull out his phone and say “Yeah the Metaverse was right here?”
: But yeah, this is what I mean when I say the ending is a self-retcon. Logically, thousands of people just saw giant pillars of bone and a fuckhuge Gnostic battlemech come out of the ground. Some of them even fucking died… though presumably Igor saved them.
: I’m picturing thousands of people in the Velvet Jail lined up in front of Igor’s desk and spilling out the prison door into Mementos. Igor has a basket with a sign reading “Free Pixies, please take one”.
: Here’s what I’m realizing about this. One of two things is now true: either going after Shido was fucking pointless, or going after Yaldabaoth was fucking pointless.
: If the entire time, Sae could have ended this by arresting Joker and charging him with being John Persona, wouldn’t that have broken Yaldabaoth’s plan in two? His entire plan hinged on Shido getting away with everything.
: On the other hand, if defeating Yaldabaoth means that Sae still needs to ruin Joker’s life… doesn’t that mean that going after Yaldabaoth was pointless? Wouldn’t it have been better to break his plan that way and then hope that he fucks off without them having to fight?
: “That will mean placing you on center stage. You’ll be treated as a hero who saved this country… but there’s no way the police or the public prosecutors will let that slide. If you turn yourself into the police, you’ll definitely be arrested.”
: “I’ll close all the cases surrounding Shido. I intend to expose them all. It’s to prevent society from becoming distorted again. That’s what you want too, isn’t it?”
: We’ll see this later, but this is how the base game ends. Joker goes to jail, and there’s a cutscene where all of the confidants you’ve reached Rank 10 with try and get him out. I have to wonder how they’re going to make this work, considering Joker is in jail for the entirety of January…
: “I’ll ask you once more. I’d like for you to turn yourself in to the police, of your own accord.”
: The correct answer here would be “Fuck right off. You caused this, fix it yourself.” Anyway, let’s get on to the Christmas date! There’s a special Christmas Yusu-Gay coming up in the next update. Oh, and I’ll put up a vote for who we should date for the main update.
: What. What the fuck is that. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?
: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCKING SHARK-JUMPING BULLSHIT!?
: WHY THE FUCK IS HE ALIVE!? THIS WAS THE ONE FUCKING THING THEY DIDN’T COP OUT ON IN THE BASE GAME!
: GOD FUCKING DAMMIT FUCK THIS SHIT! THIS IS NI NO KUNI 2! THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS! DEATH IS A VERY PERMANENT AND SERIOUS THING? NAH!
: FUUUUUUUUUUCK! So yeah, remember when I said I fucking hate Akechi? THIS IS WHY! Welcome to Royal, a game that was designed entirely by a fucking focus group.
: Let me just post this. This was a popularity poll that was done by Sony in September 2020 for Persona 5’s fifth anniversary. It surveyed 48,139 people.
: Even five years after release, Akechi ranks above every other party member except Makoto… and he’s only in the game for one dungeon before he fucking dies!
: As I’ve explained before, Akechi gets this level of votes because of the BL crowd. They want gay representation and they want Akechi to be Joker’s “cute gay pancake boyfriend” as I saw one person put it. I can’t really blame them - it’s not their fault that the game has no gay representation but has two gay-coded characters.
: Now, there’s ways the writers for Royal could have approached this. They could’ve put in some gay representation - the way I did. They could have re-written Akechi and put in a new villain who wouldn’t be as popular with the BL crowd. I mean hell, Kasumi’s dateable and she’s only in one dungeon.
: But what did they do? They went with the worst possible option! It’s fucking stupid! They had to call Akechi’s VA back anyway! With the bare fucking minimum of effort, they could have made this work! But no, can’t be helped! Fuck!
: You know what? Fuck this, I’m calling this an update. Next time, we get to watch the writers for Royal shit their pants as hard as Hashino did. I’ll put up a poll for the Christmas date and the Christmas Yusu-Gay by Salty Vanilla.