Colors Flying High - Let's Play Persona 5 Royal

Click Here for Update 109

newmascotresized: Man, I feel like it’s been forever since we’ve done confidants. I haven’t had to open the guide in what, like ten updates? Maybe more?

newmascotresized: It fucking gets me that this is almost a dig at Maruki, but then isn’t - and I know it isn’t because if it was, the writers would’ve spelled it out more.

newmascotresized: If Japan is the most prosperous country, doesn’t that mean that other countries (who also want to be the most prosperous) aren’t as happy?

newmascotresized: I’d like to remind you that in the actual 2017, people were pulling their money out of Japan en masse due to the government instituting negative interest rates the year before.

MorganaCat: “…Everyone’s faces look so calm for some reason. But this happiness can’t…”

Ryuji: “There was somethin’ I wanted to talk to you about. If you’re free, I mean. Sweet, thanks! It was definitely worth waiting around… crap, is everyone else already at school!? We gotta book it, Akira!”

Kawakami: “You’ve all heard of ‘The Restaurant of Many Orders’ by Kenji Miyazawa, right?”

newmascotresized: Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese writer and poet who primarily wrote children’s literature. Only two of his works were published during his lifetime, with Restaurant of Many Orders being one of them.

newmascotresized: Miyazawa only became well-known after his death: one of his better-known stories is Night on the Galactic Railroad, which was never finished. It was adapted into an anime film in 1985.

newmascotresized: Unfortunately, he does have a bit of a problematic association that really isn’t his fault - one of his poems (from Spring and Asura, the only other thing he published while alive) was used by the Japanese government in the 1940s as war propaganda.

newmascotresized: There’s an English version of Restaurant of Many Orders titled “Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa” if you’re interested in reading it yourself.

Kawakami: “It was aimed at children, but even when you read it now, it really pulls you in. Speaking of, one of Kenji Miyazawa’s strengths is his sense of naming fictional lands in his stories.”

Kawakami: “Ihatov is the most famous among them. This place is loosely named after the author’s hometown. Okay, now… Kurusu-kun. Where do you think the fictional land of ‘Ihatov’ is modeled after?”

newmascotresized: Miyazawa spent most of his life in Iwate, and supposedly (according to Wikipedia at least, but it’s unsourced and therefore probably bullshit) got the name from the Esperanto pronunciation of Iwate.

newmascotresized: Wikipedia also claims he died the day after spending an hour talking to a group of farmers about fertilizer, but we all know what actually killed him: Esperanto. That and tuberculosis.

Kawakami: “Yup, that’s correct. ‘Ihatov’ is Kenji Miyazawa’s fantasy world… his utopia. A utopia is an ideal world, separate from our own world. Your own little paradise, huh? It’d be amazing if that actually existed.”

Kawakami: “All the booze and meat you want! …Oh, but then I’d be fat. And perpetually hung over. You know what, maybe things aren’t so bad as they are.”

MorganaCat: “Kawakami is pretty realistic…”

newmascotresized: Why is this a fucking IM conversation!? Show don’t tell, you fucking idiots! Fuck! You had one fucking job!

MorganaCat: “Throwing away your past to live in blissful ignorance… yeah, I could never live like that either.”

newmascotresized: You’ll notice pretty quickly that all of the Rank 11s are the fucking same, just with slightly different wording to make it seem like a different character. This shit is peak lazy.

Ryuji: “…Yeah, I had a feeling you’d get me. Well, there’s somethin’ I wanna talk about. Since we’re bros an’ all, I figured I’d just invite you over…”

Ryuji: “Geez, that fast!? You don’t even know what it’s about yet! Just listen, okay? I want this apology to mean something, dammit.”

Ryuji: “It’s like, you know how things have been for me? From the new year to a little while ago? How Dr. Maruki gave me a dream life, and I just kinda… went with it?”

Ryuji: “We basically spent last year together. And you supported me through a bunch of personal shit, too.”

newmascotresized: This reminds me a lot of that one Persona 5 OVA where the second episode is a recap. Did they really think no one was going to notice them recycling the same scene eight goddamn times, especially when you have nothing else to do but these scenes?

Ryuji: “I even told you I’d help whenever you needed it, and now, well… even I know I really let you down.”

Ryuji: “Nah, that was a little late. You’d already figured everything out. Knew from the start, right? I mean, sure, I could fight with the rest of the team like nothin’s wrong…”

Ryuji: “But I dunno. Feels like that’d be betraying all this stuff we built up together. Either way, I can’t just let this go. Gotta settle things somehow.”

Ryuji: “Not… gonna stop… till you say I can. Can’t… forgive myself… unless I do this! Can’t believe… how lame I was… shitty thing… to do…”

newmascotresized: He does around two and a half squats during this text, meaning he’s winded after four. No wonder I never use him.

Ryuji: “Huh? The hell’s… that… supposed to mean…? …Urgh- I can’t think and flex at the same time!”

Ryuji: “Should’ve figured this’d be pointless. I tried to think of somethin’ good, but even I know I’m dumb. So, I… I really wanted to keep going with the track team. Hoped I could keep it going, maybe get a scholarship, and be a star athlete for college. Make life easier for my mom.”

Ryuji: “And yeah, the doc’s big dream would’ve made that happen. But still… I dunno. When I think about it, I realize maybe it isn’t that hard a decision. I went through all that bad shit, got wrapped up in hating Kamoshida, turned into some delinquent…”

Ryuji: “…Almost got the both of us expelled, started hangin’ out with Ann and Mishima more… and even had my big conversation with Nakaoka and Takeishi, even if they beat the crap out of me. Heh…”

newmascotresized: A part of me wants to skip the rest of these scenes, because they’re all like this. They’re pointless fucking recaps that they shoved in to say they had more content.

Ryuji: “But that’s all part of my life. I still own that, y’know? It was a real shitshow sometimes, but I came out of everything stronger. I’m here 'cause I beat my problems. I can’t just pretend they never happened. Wouldn’t be right.”

Ryuji: “Yeah. And that’s why… I’ll stick with the reality I fought for. The one where we went through all of our shit together. That’s where I belong.”

newmascotresized: Oh god dammit.

Blatant Ripoff Persona: William

Origin: An Actual Person

Persona 5 Royal “Original”

First name of William Kidd, who is also Ryuji’s starter Persona.

newmascotresized: How original.

newmascotresized: Apart from being blatant design recycling, William… kinda sucks. A full-party Charge isn’t terrible, but at the same time unless you have a very specific party setup (most likely Ryuji, Yusuke and Akechi or Sumire) you’re probably not going to get a lot of mileage out of it.

newmascotresized: His trait is the only thing he’s really got going for him - it’s one of the only ways to boost physical damage short of using an item.

Ryuji: “Look, you have no idea. When I gotta take a bath knowing I’m not gonna get to sleep in the futon after, that kills me. Uh… sorry. Guess I just dragged you over here to listen to me whine.”

Ryuji: “Look, I know sometimes I’m a real pain in the ass, but… from now on, I’m gonna run with everything I’ve got. So all you gotta do is count on me, Akira!”

MorganaCat: " ‘Kill me,’ huh… talk about a morbid request. Let’s help him before he does something even more drastic!"

newmascotresized: I really should’ve done a typo counter for Royal. We’re up to at least seven or eight.

newmascotresized: Anyway, something weird happens tonight. I look on the map and notice that a couple of areas are open that shouldn’t be, because we’re already past the cut-off date.

newmascotresized: Using the power of Lucifer, we can somehow get that one event with Hifumi we missed earlier - that being the one in Jinbocho that I posted back on the day I missed it using borrowed footage. The text is nearly identical, so I won’t post it again.

newmascotresized: They must’ve changed the flags in Royal to allow for this, and I’m fine with that.

Futaba: “Just… something’s been on my mind. For a while now, actually. …Can we talk sometime? Whenever’s good for you. Thanks… see ya later.”

newmascotresized: There’s a new prize in the arcade we can win, so I grab it.

newmascotresized: I also put up the King Piece decoration. Joker’s shelf is almost full.

Futaba: “You got some time right now? There’s something I wanna talk to you about. It’s really important…”

Futaba: “Thanks… then come to my ro- actually, hold on… can you come a bit later, Akira? I’ll leave my door open, so just come in.”

Futaba: “Um… there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about… so…”

Futaba: “I made a promise to help you whenever you were in trouble. For your sake, and for mine. But now, I…”

Futaba: “Yeah, I’m gonna help us fight back… I’m part of the Phantom Thieves, right? I feel the same way as everyone else. I mean… yeah, I don’t want to accept this reality…”

Futaba: “That’s all still true, but… I know this isn’t real. I figured that out a while ago. But I thought… if I got to see my mom again, then it was okay…”

Futaba: “…I’m so selfish! I was just thinking about what I wanted! You’re mad, I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Futaba: “…Don’t lie to me. You’re mad at me. You have to be. Why wouldn’t you be!? I betrayed you! Don’t you get that!?”

newmascotresized: Joker taps the maxed-out social stats page.

Futaba: “…Sorry… I guess I’m still a little freaked out. This isn’t even what I wanted to talk about… there’s something else I wanted you to hear, anyway. Can I… um, is it cool if I say it?”

Futaba: “So like… Dr. Maruki’s reality isn’t totally one hundred percent illusion, right?”

newmascotresized: Fuck! Where was this conversation two weeks ago, when it might have had some fucking impact!?

Futaba: “Me too. But I guess I won’t get to stay with her. I know… I mean, I know now that this is all in my head. But I wanted to talk with her more. Go on shopping trips and stuf. I dunno, just… I wish I had more time with her.”

newmascotresized: This might seem like it makes no sense, given that Akechi told us that Wakaba and Okumura were both alive (and not Shadows, bullshit ass-pull clones, illusions, or anything else).

newmascotresized: It also doesn’t make a lot of sense that Akechi is still around when Okumura and Wakaba have mysteriously disappeared after the party broke free of Maruki’s control. Allow me to explain that, because the writers won’t.

newmascotresized: In the first draft of Royal’s script, the writers completely capitulated to the focus groups and put in a scene retconning Akechi’s death outside of Maruki’s reality.

newmascotresized: The original explanation for why Akechi is still around is that he was never actually dead - he was merely in rehab somewhere recovering from multiple gunshot wounds and also being exploded.

newmascotresized: While I have to give the writers credit for not being totally spineless, fuck them for ever thinking that’d be acceptable. By the way, the comments section for that video is what a world without reading comprehension would look like.

newmascotresized: By the way, I had a job interview yesterday. Halfway through, I realized I didn’t want it - they don’t offer health insurance and the pay sucks. Then they ask me “What do you do for fun, outside of work?”

newmascotresized: I look this lady in the eye and go “I do commentated playthroughs of video games. But not fun ones. They’re all games I absolutely hate.”

newmascotresized: She looks at me with an eyebrow raised and goes: “…and that’s what you do for fun?”

newmascotresized: Me: “Yes.”

Futaba: “B-But still, like… we can’t just live totally dependent on Dr. Maruki’s reality! Right? Even if I won’t get to see my mom anymore… if I can manage to keep working hard and moving forward, like I was doing in our reality… then I… I think she’d be proud of me.”

Futaba: “Y-Yeah! Um… thanks. …So that’s what I’m gonna do. If Mom could see that I was working hard, being a part of the group… I think she’d be really happy for me.”

Futaba: “I’ve been thinking really hard lately. Wondering how I’d want Mom to see me. And I think I figured it out. I want to be someone who keeps looking ahead - someone who never stops moving.”

Futaba: “This time, I’ll do what I can to protect you. And everyone else too. So let’s go take back our own reality. The reality where we can beat anything the world throws at us, as long as we have each other. The reality my mom gave me.”

New Persona: Al-Azif

Origin: HP Lovecraft

Persona 5 Royal Original

Arabic name of the Necronomicon in HP Lovecraft’s stories.

newmascotresized: Unlike everyone else, Futaba only gets a trait upgrade and a new ability. Her trait is her finisher screen - any time we get that (which is pretty often) we now get a full heal in addition to it insta-killing enemies.

newmascotresized: Ultimate Support actually does more than what you’d think. It does three things at once: casts a full-party Samarecarm (thus reviving anyone who is down), then Mediarahan (restoring everyone to full HP) followed by a full-party Heat Riser.

Futaba: “Master Futaba has reached full recovery! Get ready for perfect navigation, no matter what we’re up against!”

Futaba: “What can I say? I’m my mom’s daughter! I’ll be pestering you a lot more from now on, so… sorry in advance, and thanks!”

newmascotresized: Tonight, we’re going to make a very important decision.

newmascotresized: First, I lock up Mada and feed him a couple of Magic incenses. Mada has a low Magic stat compared to Joker’s other Personas, and I wanted to buff that a bit.

newmascotresized: He’ll sit there for a few days, and then we’ll replace him with Yoshitsune for maximum damage.

newmascotresized: Anyway, a very important decision. The jazz club offers Ali Dance tonight, but we can only teach it to one person. This is good on pretty much anyone who isn’t Haru: Haru needs so many skills to be good that we can’t really give up a slot for Ali Dance.

newmascotresized: I boiled it down to Ann and Yusuke, who both have extremely common weaknesses, and then went with Ann. Yusuke has a slightly higher natural evasion, and Ann has the lowest HP of anyone, so she’s a good pick.

Ann: “Your room’s pretty neat too, but this isn’t bad either!”

newmascotresized: Very mature, she says as she drinks out of something that looks like it’s about 300% sugar.

Ann: “When I practice my walk for my modeling job, I sometimes feel like I’ll forget how to walk normally after… adults might look stylish walking that way, but if a high schooler does it, I think it just looks like they’re trying to show off.”

newmascotresized: Joker panics. The whole point of agreeing to the date with Morgana was that no one was going to remember anyway. Does this mean Yusuke knows?

newmascotresized: In hindsight, I don’t know why I kept Dekaja. We’ve only seen what, one boss that ever used buffs? Maruki can buff himself, but at that point it’d probably be better to use that turn doing damage.

newmascotresized: Today, we’re going to do Ann’s Rank 11. Normally, this would be when we’d be doing Yusuke’s, but we have to put our boyfriend first.

newmascotresized: Ann’s bedroom is a war crime. Seriously, TWO shoe towers?

Ann: “Oh, I didn’t call you here for anything big or official… sorry. Actually, I wanted to give you a proper apology for everything. You know. Cause I got caught up in the life Dr. Maruki made for me.”

Ann: “I guess, but… even if you’re okay with it, it’s really been bothering me. …Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what the right choice is. I mean, I’m not saying Dr. Maruki’s reality is better or anything…”

Ann: “But I can’t stop thinking about Shiho. Or how great her life could’ve been if things were like this.”

Ann: “No. Not at all. I know this isn’t actually reality. I would’ve been happy, sure, but… it wouldn’t have been real. Shiho was still moving forward. Even after everything she’d been through, she didn’t lose hope.”

Ann: “My strength came from her. That’s why, when Kamoshida said he’d kill himself, I told him he couldn’t run from it all. She didn’t run away, so he can’t either. And if I took the easy way out now… I’d be letting Shiho down.”

newmascotresized: Wait, what the fuck are you talking about? Shiho attempted suicide!

Ann: “You’re so kind, Akira. …Kinda familiar, huh? Back when I finally broke down under the Kamoshida stuff, you listened to me like this too. You didn’t know me at all, but you still listened to everything.”

Ann: “I couldn’t figure you out. Like, I kept thinking, “What is this guy’s deal?” Not only that, but you helped me with Shiho and my modeling… you’re too nice for your own good.”

Ann: “Eheh, I get it. Can’t stand a sad face on a pretty girl, huh? Anyway, I really am grateful. But that just makes me feel even worse about accepting this reality. I’m never going to lose my way again.”

newmascotresized: No, that’s Matoi Ryuko. Kill la Kill was so fucking good, unlike this nonsense.

Ann: “From now on, I’m going to face reality. For me, for Shiho… and for you.”

newmascotresized: My favorite thing about this cutscene is that if you look, Ann sits on her bed the entire time, staring at Joker and not blinking. The models in SMT V are somehow better than this, even if it has massive framerate issues.

New Persona: Celestine

Origin: A Real Person

Persona 5 Royal Original

Unlike the other third Personas (who are usually the first/proper name for the first Persona), Ann’s third Persona is named after Celestine Galle-Marie, a French actress most famous for playing Carmen. Looks kind of like a clown from far away.

newmascotresized: There’s one interesting thing about Celestine’s design that you never really see in-game. The back of her jacket has a design reading “Libre elle est nee, el libre lle mourra”. It’s a line from a song in the final scene of Carmen, shortly before Carmen dies. It translates to “Free she was born, free she will die.”

newmascotresized: Celestine gains resistance to Electric and has her trait’s SP cost reduction boosted from 25% to 50%. I only took High Energy because it’s marginally more useful than Dekaja at this point. The SP cost on it is WAY too high for what it does.

Ann: “Okay, I’m ready to move on! Thank you for everything! I promise, I’m gonna do even better from here on out!”

newmascotresized: There’s another unique non-rankup scene with Hifumi we can do, so why not?

Hifumi: “Change how you look at things, and the game will change as well. The world is like a shogi board. The pieces that live in the world can completely change, depending on the emotions of the player…”

newmascotresized: Oh, I thought she was going to go “The world is like a shogi board - flat.”

Hifumi: “I’ve been so twisted by the adults around me that I began to lose sight of myself. But after I met you and we started playing shogi together… my heart began to change.”

Hifumi: “Similar to this Ferris wheel… you showed me a different view, and changed my world…”

Hifumi: “That’s fine. All it takes is a single moment to overcome a repetition of moves… and an expert hand can break through any situation. That is what you are.”

Hifumi: “From behind, all scenery looks bright and vibrant. I truly love you from the depths of my heart.”

newmascotresized: …Why couldn’t she have been a party member? Why couldn’t they have made it so Makoto was working with Akechi the entire time? Oh wait, because that would’ve been good writing.

newmascotresized: I’m not shitting you when I say the rest of this game after today is going to be nothing but Sumire. We have to do six ranks of bullshit to get her to 11.

Makoto: “I’m glad I found you. I wanted to speak with you.”

Makoto: “I just want to talk, that’s all. If you have the time… is that okay? Thank you. Then let’s keep moving for now.”

newmascotresized: Why the fuck did they do this when they could’ve just shown it? This is fucking Allanson writing.

MorganaCat: “That Ushimaru, huh? It’s hard to believe. Guess we’ll just have to check it out when we’re in his class.”

newmascotresized: Unfortunately, we have to do Makoto’s Rank 11 today.

Makoto: “There’s something I just had to tell you.”

Makoto: “Honestly, I wanted to apologize. I couldn’t back you up when you needed me the most…”

newmascotresized: When have we ever needed Makoto?

Makoto: “I’m talking about Dr. Maruki. Ever since the new year, I’ve been stuck in his fake reality. You remember that time before I joined the Phantom Thieves, when I called you to the student council room?”

Makoto: “I challenged you on your ideals, threatened to expose you all… as if I knew anything about what was going on. …But since then, I’ve learned so much from the Phantom Thieves. From you.”

Makoto: “You’ve saved me, more times than I can possibly count. …After all that… I’d promised myself that if you were ever in trouble, I would leap in to save you.”

Makoto: “But… I forgot that vow. I just threw it away so I could cling to Father and Sis. It’s awful. To know that all along, I was so weak and self-centered…”

newmascotresized: It totally is her fault.

Makoto: “Even if it isn’t… does that really make it okay? Considering all the ways I made your struggle harder, even unknowingly, I can’t just let that go.”

Makoto: “You know… I think I’m more lonely than I was willing to admit. Father never spent much time at home. When he was there, he always had his mind on some case.”

Makoto: “And Sis put all her time into work. For both our sakes. I respected them both so much. And I still do, of course… but I can’t just let them take care of me forever.”

Makoto: “You know what I mean? I think it’s the right lesson to take. In any case, I’ve made my decision. I’m done just sitting quietly and doing as I’m told. If I’m weak, or self-centered, or lonely… or too dependent on my family… then that’s my problem to fix.”

Makoto: “But my pain’s still a part of me. All the struggles, your support - it’s what helped me stand up for myself. I can’t lose that. I’m not exactly abandoning the person I was. But I figure trying to bottle it up will only make my life harder.”

Makoto: "I want to be able to look at the most awful, disgraceful parts of myself, and still be able to say ‘So what?’ "

newmascotresized: That’s my response to all of these Rank 11 scenes. “So what?”

Makoto: "Huh? I’m not sure… at the very least, I know I probably shouldn’t be proud of them. That’s why I wanted to apologize. I guess I’m not completely ready to stand on my own just yet. But… I’ll keep trying, and I won’t run away.

newmascotresized: Makoto prepares to ascend to THE SMART DIMENSION where she can finally go to an anime filled with proper nouns.

New Persona: Agnes

Origin: Medieval Christian Fanfiction

Persona 5 Royal Original

Agnes is another name for Pope Joan/Johanna. She didn’t exist any more as Agnes than she did under any other name.

newmascotresized: Agnes gains a resistance to Curse and a significant buff to status effects. You need Ann and Yusuke to make full use of it, but it’s free Technicals any time it procs.

newmascotresized: Checkmate is a terrible skill. It’s meant specifically for Maruki’s fight and maybe Okumura’s if you do New Game Plus. I think Makoto can cast it three times on a full SP bar. It’s not worth it.

Makoto: “It’s strange. All it took to make my heart stronger was to put myself first?”

Makoto: “Sorry, but it looks like I’ll still have to rely on you a while longer. So I hope you’ll be prepared.”

newmascotresized: We don’t have anything interesting to do tonight, so I put up the Buchimaru-kun doll and called it an update.

newmascotresized: Next time, we’ll do Haru’s Rank 11. We’ll also do a couple ranks of Sumire, but there’s a free day and I might use it to try and fight the Reaper. We’ll see.

Aristotle did not, in fact, see a world where weirdos would latch on to both of those things.

Damn, imagine if one of the party members had been in that situation. You’d have to like, think about whether Yusuke would eve be truly happy without art, or if Haru would be happy if her dad wasn’t evil but she didn’t have her coffeehouse dreams instead of just having Joker walk up to people and go “Are you suuuuuuuure?”

I wouldn’t have guessed Yusuke’s ultimate Persona would by Ruby Rhod but alright. I guess he’s gotta be hot, HOT, HOT!!!

But maybe…in Maruki’s reality…POPE JOAN WAS REAL??? and was named agnes

I’ve been playing Scarlet Nexus (I won’t say “don’t play Scarlet Nexus”, but I will say don’t pay more than like $15 for it) and it has a similar plot of “maybe warping reality is bad because then things would be different and being different is kanashii”, only the reality-warping in question is time travel instead of Congitive Psience™.

After thinking about it and becoming increasingly moody and pessimistic, I think SNX (this is apparently the official abbreviation) and P5R use this plot for the same reason: it’s completely safe. There’s no way to read any statement or commentary or claim or opinion into or out of it.

You know, maybe I should refund it. I haven’t actually played it yet, I’ve been too busy mapping for SS14.

Whoa there, pal, those’re some dangerous thoughts you’re havin’! Those things might take effort and money, and we’re on a shoestring budget selling this full-price expansion. I don’t know that you’re a good fit for this company. Maybe you should try working for Square-Enix, I hear they’re hirin’.

Click Here for Update 110

newmascotresized: We’ve got Haru’s Rank 11 scene today, and then it’s nothing but Sumire and Mementos.

Inui: “Because of that, I tried getting into the stock market… not a thing you want to jump into with no experience. I lost five months of my allowance in one fell swoop…”

newmascotresized: That’s uh… not really how the stock market works. Unless he was gambling on options or buying dumbass meme stocks.

Inui: “It wasn’t a huge loss, so it’s not that bad, but… it’s quite a thing to stare your failure portfolio in the face. My portfolio looked awful. I used that word because my portfolio looked absolutely terrible, but…”

Inui: " ‘Awful’ originally meant something else. …So, Kurusu-kun, a question. What did the world ‘awful’ originally mean?"

Inui: “That is correct. Yes, it was only comparatively recently that ‘awful’ took on a negative implication. It once stood for awe of any kind. This is why older English documents use phrases like ‘awful majesty’ and ‘awful power’.”

Inui: “It could still be used to imply a certain kind of dread - that was just one of several possible uses back then. But as times changed, and language evolved as the centuries went by… we ended up with more specific words: ‘awful’ for the bad, and ‘awesome’ for the good.”

Inui: “…Oh, it’s time already? Let me say one last thing. After this winter, you’ll all be studying for exams. You can use your time wisely, or slack off. Either way, I guess your test scores are going to be awful!”

MorganaCat: “Well, one thing’s for sure: you’re definitely an impressive guy. ‘Awe-inspiring’ might be a little much, but… I know I can count on you.”

newmascotresized: Anyway, let’s go see Haru. I also harvest the tomatoes we planted uh… three weeks ago? It was before Yaldabaoth. I also plant some potatoes, which double physical damage.

newmascotresized: Haru’s bedroom looks like it was made of rejected Animal Crossing items.

Haru: “Yes, well… I needed to speak with you about this situation… or rather, because of it. I feel I owe you an apology, Akira-kun. I’m sorry… I was just so useless…”

newmascotresized: Joker: “So you’re going to grow some bangs and maybe get another 10 points in your magic stat? You’re finally going to make yourself worth using over Makoto?”

Haru: “I’m so ashamed… Dr. Maruki created me a saccharine, perfect new reality - and I accepted it without a second’s pause. It was only because of you that I was able to find my own path.”

Haru: “You were the one who gave me a future… and what did I do with it…? …I’m so pathetic.”

newmascotresized: Joker: “Look, I understand. Bangs take time, and you’ve only been in the party since October. Maybe you can get some extensions or something.”

Haru: “…You’re so kind, Akira. But I’m afraid that doesn’t feel like enough, this time. I want to stand at your side through this, and I want to do it with pride.”

Haru: “I wanted us to rebuild the company together. No, more than that - I wanted to save my father. But that’s just not possible. No matter how important he was to me, he’s gone now, and I cannot bring him back.”

Haru: “Surely, if… if I could just rewrite the past for my own benefit, it would be terribly selfish.”

newmascotresized: You know what just occurred to me as I was writing this? There’s no second version of any of the Rank 11 scenes for dating versus not dating. Then I realized that it’s kind of a blessing that there aren’t, because the last thing this game needs is more writing.

Haru: “I… don’t know. But what of the newfound purpose I gained after my father’s death? What of all the support you gave me? Even if I could simply choose to be happy, it wouldn’t be worth denying everything that brought me here.”

Haru: “So I need you to understand that I’m determined to see this through. I won’t run away anymore. I refuse Dr. Maruki’s ‘gift’ to us. I’ll choose our own reality. The one I defined through my own hardship, mistakes, and tears.”

newmascotresized: I should’ve gotten someone to do a drawing of Haru going Super Saiyan and growing bangs for this scene.

New Persona: Lucy

Origin: An Actual Person

Persona 5 Royal Original

Rather than being the first name of Haru’s first Persona, her final Persona is named after Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle. Lucy Hay is mostly notable for having played both sides of England’s Second Civil War - first on the side of the Parliamentarians, and then on the side of the Royalists. She was supposedly the inspiration for Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers. Incidentally, if you look at the portraits of Lucy Hay on the Wikipedia page, she also lacks bangs.

newmascotresized: Lucy is THE BEST third Persona in the game. Why, you ask? It’s not because of her resistance to Ice or her trait, which gives you a 50% chance to avoid status ailments.

newmascotresized: No, it’s because of Life Wall. Life Wall is a full-party reflect that works for both magic and physical attacks. Life Wall can be used to cheese the SHIT out of bosses, even if it costs 95 SP.

Haru: “I’m sorry I kept you for so long. That’s all I wanted you to hear. From now on, I’ll fight even harder - to make up for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

Haru: “Thank you. Hearing you say that makes me feel like I can do anything. I will grow even stronger. I have to keep pressing forward. For Father’s sake, too.”

newmascotresized: Tonight, we’re making curry. I thought there was a trophy for making the best curry and the best coffee, but that’s incorrect - it’s a Thieves Den award.

newmascotresized: Incidentally, we’re one trophy from the platinum at this point. The only one we won’t have by the end of this update is getting all the stamps in Mementos because that’s busy work.

MorganaCat: “… This curry sure has a lot of ingredients, doesn’t it? Did I see you put fruit in there?”

newmascotresized: I didn’t know these existed, and hell if I’m going to bother getting them all.

MorganaCat: “Huh… I never knew apples would go so well with spicy curry.”

newmascotresized: There’s a reading slot on the train this morning. I’m skipping it. I’m also skipping Haru complaining at us to go into Mementos. We’ll do that tomorrow.

newmascotresized: Today, we have Sumire’s Rank 6. It’s one of the longest confidant events in the game.

Sumire: “I am so, so sorry! Seeing me trying to act like Kasumi must have been so painful and awkward for everyone… everyone must have noticed that I was acting strangely…”

Sumire: “They were probably being nice to me, knowing I’d just lost my sister… but even then… I had no idea I was even supposed to be sad. I didn’t remember that my sister was gone.”

Sumire: “When my coach told me to ‘think about who I really am,’ I thought it was just… figurative. Something about my slump. I was just living my life - like I didn’t even care that she was gone! I can’t take this shame…”

newmascotresized: I don’t blame you if you’re not reading any of this, because I’m not. We fucking get it! Your sister is fucking dead! We’ve known this for HOURS at this point! Fuck!

newmascotresized: Have I mentioned there are TEN FUCKING DIALOG CHOICES in this event, and only one matters?

newmascotresized: TEN FUCKING DIALOG CHOICES! NONE OF THEM MATTER! FUCK!

Sumire: “…I appreciate what you’re saying, but… I still can’t forgive myself. Ever since we were kids, Kasumi was always the one who decided what I did, what I chose, where I went… I couldn’t do anything without her…”

Sumire: “I suppose it’s clear why my grades weren’t going up much. I was never on Kasumi’s level to begin with. I was so pretentious, so wrapped up in my own stupid little problems… I was too self-absorbed to do anything!”

Sumire: “… I’m starting to remember things from our past now. It’s hard, but I’m trying. There’s a lot. It covers everything, starting from when Kasumi and I first got into gymnastics up until just recently.”

Sumire: “I want to talk about how it used to be for Kasumi and me. Would you listen?”

newmascotresized: You know what would have been a thousand times more effective? If Kasumire had a dungeon with an interesting design and interesting gameplay mechanics where we could’ve learned this instead.

Sumire: “I was too little to really understand the sport or the rules… but everyone praised me when I did well. The coach would get me little rewards, like ice cream cones.”

Sumire: “We did our best trying to learn the moves and routines, since it kept getting us ice cream.”

newmascotresized: You know what this is? This is that one dipshit scene from the Wolfenstein reboot. I think I linked this in one of my other LPs, but that’s exactly what this is.

Sumire: “Yes. We were together every day. We ate our favorite ice cream together, we talked, we laughed… those days were so fun. And one day, around when we started going to junior meets, Kasumi asked me…”

Sumire: "…All with a straight face, of course. She could be really funny sometimes. So obviously, I told her, ‘Kasumi, you’re a super genius!’ "

Sumire: “Well, we were just kids. But she really was a genius, you know. Everything came so easily to her. And every day, she only got better.”

Sumire: “You remember what my coach said, Senpai? That my… well, that Kasumi’s greatest weapon was her boldness?”

Sumire: “Kasumi was always so bold. she was like a beacon of confidence. And one day, I realized I’d never catch up. It didn’t matter how hard I tried. I’d have consolation prizes for the rest of my life.”

Sumire: “Kasumi was always the one up on the podium. But… even when she won her ice cream, she never ate it without me. I always told her not to worry about me, but she still said she’d wait until we could enjoy it together.”

Sumire: “She really believed in me. She said we’d be the best in the world someday. She had her own practices to do, but she was always so busy helping me… she spent hours trying to help me.”

Sumire: “She was so kind and strong… she was the perfect older sister. …Kasumi’s kindness was so… so… infuriating.”

newmascotresized: WE FUCKING GET IT! You’ve spent the last fucking five minutes doing nothing but illustrating the fucking point of how much better your sister was than you! We fucking get it! Fuck!

Sumire: “She was always the one on the podium, surrounded by flashing cameras. But all I could do was watch from the shadows. I’m not Kasumi… and no matter what I do, I’ll never be like her!”

Sumire: “If she’d just given up on me, it wouldn’t have hurt so much! At least then people would stop trying to compare us!”

Sumire: “You’re right… I suppose I was just selfish, in the end. The thought kept coming back. Every day, my mind went back to it. Everyone would be better off if I didn’t exist.”

newmascotresized: Hold it. Hold on a fucking second. What you’re saying is that you don’t know why, it didn’t really matter how hard you tried, and that in the end it didn’t even matter even though you tried so hard and got so far.

newmascotresized: God dammit the writers just made a character who is a fucking early 2000s Linkin Park song. That band was a fucking mistake, just like fucking Creed.

Sumire: “The thought kept coming back. Every day, my mind went back to it. Everyone would be better off if I didn’t exist. Either that, or I should just be Kasumi. She’s the one people really want.”

Sumire: “Sumire’s the one who’s useless. Pointless. Who would care if she died? …But my sister died instead. Why did she have to protect an idiot like me? I… I watched her-”

Sumire: “Yes. I’m done running away. Akira-senpai… I can’t stop here. Now, I want to keep doing gymnastics as Sumire. I want to hit those heights Kasumi was aiming for. Otherwise… I’d never be able to face her.”

newmascotresized: No, you know what this is? This is the fucking sad song from Ouendan 2, only Ouendan 2 did it in about five minutes and with a fraction of the fucking text. I searched the thread and I don’t THINK I posted that before.

newmascotresized: I fucking hate that the writers could’ve done fucking ANYTHING for Sumire, and instead went with the most generic rehashed sports story imaginable.

Sumire: “Please… will you keep going out with me now that I’m Sumire? I want you to hold me to this. To make sure I don’t run away from who I am again.”

Sumire: “R-Really? Thank you so much… eheh… you must think I’m pretty lame. But… I guess that’s Sumire. That’s who I am. I have to be stronger. Both in my heart, and with my gymnastic skills…”

Sumire: “But for now… I’m Sumire Yoshizawa. And it’s nice to meet you, again.”

newmascotresized: Fitness Talk would’ve been nice, I dunno… back when we were still negotiating instead of just fusing the best Personas possible?

Sumire: “I think this really helped me. Now I can focus on turning over a new leaf, and doing my best. Let’s get some practice in before I have to go to club. We’ll be training even harder than before, Senpai. I’ll be extra strict from now on.”

newmascotresized: Joker gets +5 Max HP.

Sumire: “And I’m sorry you had to see such a pathetic side of me… as soon as I acknowledged myself as Sumire, my gymnastics training started to fall apart, too. …But this is the real me, I guess.”

Sumire: “Yes. I’m done turning my eyes from it. I need to move forward, even without Kasumi. It doesn’t matter how painful it is - I’ll accept everything.”

Sumire: “I’ll think about where Kasumi got her strength from. And what I can do as Sumire… I’ll calm down and think all of this through.”

newmascotresized: Thank god, she’s shut the fuck up. Here’s the thing: if I boiled down the actual contents of that confidant event into the salient points, I could have done it in five dialog boxes.

Sumire: “My sister is dead.”
Joker: “I know.”
Sumire: “She did gymnastics in Odaiba. Earned my first ice cream there. Sweet, sweet ice cream.”
Joker: “Great.”
Sumire: “Actually, I hate my sister.”

newmascotresized: Anyway, let’s do the stupid crossword puzzle for tonight and then go to sleep because we are fresh out of content.

newmascotresized: There’s nothing on the schedule today - Sumire’s not available, so we’re going in to Mementos.

newmascotresized: I’ll skip us getting free time via Kawakami in Hiruta’s class, since we don’t do anything with it.

Sumire: “Um… I know I’m still a newcomer, but I’ll make sure not to slow the group down. I’m looking forward to working with you all!”

Ryuji: “I keep tellin’ you, you don’t gotta be so formal! But if you want, I can teach you everything you gotta know about what we do as the Phantom Thieves…”

MorganaCat: “Sorry to interrupt, but I already explained everything to her.”

newmascotresized: It’s… not going to make us sit through another explanation? What?

Sumire: “Ah, yes! Morgana-senpai already taught me all about them!”

Ryuji: “O-Oh… yeah, okay then.”

Futaba: “Guess you missed your chance to become a senpai, Ryuji.”

Ryuji: “Sh-Shuddup! Wasn’t even aimin’ for that anyways!”

Sumire: “Oh, I-I’m so sorry…! I didn’t mean to ruin your chance to become a senpai…”

newmascotresized: What the fuck is this dialog?

Makoto: “Well then, let’s get back on topic.”

Akechi: “We should begin by investigating Mementos. But I’d prefer to avoid dying in vain due to a lack of preparation… therefore, it’s more important than ever that you all be in your best shape before proceeding.”

newmascotresized: I wish I had a SMART GIRL portrait for Akechi.

Makoto: “As usual, we’ll let Akira handle how we should proceed. Once we’re all prepared, let’s head into the Mementos.”

TYPO COUNTER: At least 10

newmascotresized: Both of these requests are labelled “Smax”. One of them is harder than most of the actual boss fights.

newmascotresized: This is going to be a prime example of the Hashino-Allanson Rule of Explanations. There’s absolutely no reason she couldn’t have said “Oh, this is Mementos? Morgana told me all about it.” and then let us get to some actual “gameplay”. I use that term loosely.

Panther: “Oh, right - this is Violet’s first trip into Mementos.”

Skull: “Well, check this shit out - this place is EVERYONE’S Palace.”

Violet: “I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I do get the sense that it’s important! Thanks for explaining!”

Skull: “Good job catchin’ up!”

Panther: “Buuut, doesn’t it feel like the place has… changed, somehow? Or was it always like this?”

Skull: “Think so? Looks the same as usual to me.”

Queen: “You’re kidding, right? This place has always looked rather bizarre, but the massive cables are a recent addition.”

Skull: “O-Oh yeah…?”

BlackMask: “They appear to be the same cables as those we found in Maruki’s Palace. It looks like our theory about them affecting this place was accurate.”

Oracle: “Yep, we nailed that one - better than we thought we did, too. I’m getting strong readings all the way down… it leads all the way to where we found the Holy Grail.”

Noir: “But the God of Control isn’t there anymore, right?”

Morgana: “Why don’t we check it out ourselves? I’ve got something I want Violet to see, too.”

Violet: “Me?”

Morgana: “How’s about THAT!?”

Violet: “Oh… hmh.”

Panther: “Talk about a low-key reaction…”

Violet: “Well, it wasn’t really out of my depth to imagine a cat turning into a bus…”

Morgana: “But, but - my transformation…!”

Skull: “Wow, he actually let the ‘cat’ part slide that time…”

Noir: “Yes, it’s that ability to imagine it so easily that allows Morgana to transform in the first place.”

BlackMask: “Let’s go already. Standing around here’s a waste of time.”

Morgana: “B-But my main point is, I’m in a totally different league than those other buses. Hop in - you’ll see what it’s like riding in a high purr-formance vehicle!”

newmascotresized: No, Morgana, that’s how the cats from Monster Hunter talk. They’re better than you.

newmascotresized: Anyway, we have to warp all the way the hell down to the big door to the final dungeon.

Queen: “This room…”

Fox: “Indeed - I could never forget. But this is all…”

newmascotresized: This is Yusuke’s first line today. I think the writers kinda forgot he exists.

Violet: “These are all more of those cables, right? They must be coming from all over Mementos and gathering in this spot…”

Oracle: “…Actually? It’s the opposite. They’re not gathering in Mementos… they’re spreading. This is the point of origin.”

Morgana: “After all, this place is the core of the masses’ consciousness. If you want to manipulate Mementos, there’s nowhere better to start than the very heart of it…”

BlackMask: “So it intends to reach its roots from here to every corner of civilization… that’s such a desperate move, it makes me sick.”

newmascotresized: How is that desperate? What part of that is desperate? What the fuck are you even talking about?

Panther: “Hey, look at that!”

Morgana: “That’s the one handling all the data from Maruki’s Palace. What’s our next move, Joker? Should we follow where it leads?”

newmascotresized: Right nearby is the entrance to Maruki’s area of Mementos. If you’ve played Shin Megami Tensei V, the name might sound familiar.

newmascotresized: Welcome to the Path of Da’at.

Violet: “Hm? What’s that?”

Panther: “Oh, Jose.”

Violet: “Wait… a kid? Driving? And you all happen to know him already? Is there anybody you don’t know?”

Jose: “There’s a flower here… but this one smells a bit different from the others. Let’s see how it tastes… gah!”

Jose: “Aw, I guess I shouldn’t be picky. I’m going to move on further. Are you guys doing the same?”

Jose: “I see. Whether or not you do, let me know if you find any more flowers. I’ll reward you well for them. Well, good job.”

Violet: “What an odd kid.”

BlackMask: “It would be much odder if the Metaverse were as logical as the real world is.”

Oracle: “Be careful if you’re going any further, all right? I’m getting all sorts of strange readings - Shadows too.”

newmascotresized: Now, you’re probably thinking something like: “If this is a $60 expansion, did they at least do something with the Mementos segments to make it not pure filler” and the answer is no.

newmascotresized: All of the enemies are identical to the ones found at the end of the game, during the run to where Yaldabaoth was. There’s nothing new here.

newmascotresized: All of the Treasure Demons spawn in Da’at, so you can get everything from Regent to Crystal Skull.

newmascotresized: A couple floors in, I start feeling bored and wait two minutes. We’re going to take on the Reaper.

newmascotresized: When the Reaper spawns, you get this red shimmering effect on the screen. As soon as you see that, Tatsuya Sudou is after you and will not stop chasing you until you die or touch the stairs.

newmascotresized: One annoying thing about Da’at is that unlike all the other areas of Mementos (where going down is advancing), you go UPSTAIRS to advance, which kept throwing me for a loop.

newmascotresized: The best way to fight the Reaper is to let him ambush you. I didn’t do that here because he’s piss-easy at this point, but doing so makes him only get one action per turn instead of two.

newmascotresized: The Reaper wasn’t re-balanced for Royal, and it shows.

newmascotresized: His moveset consists of Concentrate, all the -dyne and ma-dyne spells, Megidolaon and a single Physical and Gun attack. What’s more important is that he has Breaks for Fire, Wind, Elec, and Ice.

newmascotresized: He also has Hamaon and Mudoon, as well as their multi-target versions. Bringing any physical attacker here is not a great idea - being at low HP doesn’t stop casters from doing damage, but it does basically shut Yusuke down.

newmascotresized: I have Yusuke bring out the big guns and start buffing. However, I didn’t really need to. You see, there’s one thing that breaks the Reaper’s AI - and that is having multiple party members that resist things.

newmascotresized: The Reaper’s AI prefers to use Breaks to remove any possible resistances before resorting to his real spells. Because all of our party members have a Null and a Resist (along with Joker being able to block the entire elemental spectrum) he’s going to need to use this a lot.

newmascotresized: With everyone Charged and buffed, the party knocks off a pretty significant chunk of the Reaper’s HP in one go.

newmascotresized: The Reaper gets his only real attack in here, which knocks Yusuke down. However…

newmascotresized: In doing so, he triggers a Showtime that brings him down to half health. At half health, the Reaper is supposed to start spamming multi-target instakills… but he never does.

newmascotresized: He uses Mudoon on Ann and then for some reason uses Wind Break twice.

newmascotresized: Makoto throws in a Checkmate and from there the Reaper goes down without doing much. I have a feeling this is because the party collectively has so many resists that they can’t all be broken at once.

newmascotresized: Killing the Reaper gets us four to five levels for everyone.

newmascotresized: The rest of this area is a joke. We can insta-kill everything, up to and including Abaddon.

newmascotresized: Floor 3 is where our first target is. I’ll skip there since nothing else interesting happens.

Oracle: “Let’s change her heart, for her child!”

Fox: “Kuniko Kagami. You are the mother who doesn’t properly care for her children, correct?”

Fox: “…Something is wrong with her.”

Queen: “Could this be what people call… self-neglect? Not being able to sustain a normal life to the point where it’s damaging to their health…”

Oracle: “I remember the request saying something about the room being messy! So not only was she neglecting her children, but herself as well!?”

Queen: “That’s not true. What about your child?”

Oracle: “That’s wrong…! Joker, we have to stop her!”

newmascotresized: You might ask “Did they do anything but take a Rangda and give it stat buffs?” and the answer is fuck no they didn’t, what do you think this is, a game that had effort put into it?

newmascotresized: The only difference here is that this Rangda can cast Makarakarn, but still has the weakness to Bless.

newmascotresized: I wound up bringing in Sumire and Haru simply because Rangda reflects Physical, meaning Yusuke is useless.

newmascotresized: The dialog here takes several minutes longer than the fight itself did.

newmascotresized: By the way, there are 40 fucking stamps in this final area, which has only 14 floors - 13 of which can spawn stamps. Getting all the stamps here is a goddamn ordeal.

newmascotresized: Now we get to the actually difficult miniboss. Where have I heard that last name before? Minamoto… Minamoto…

Queen: “He wants to die because he hurt his sister… we can’t leave him.”

Oracle: “He does look like he’s got the resolve of someone who wants to commit suicide. Be careful, Joker!”

Queen: “We’re not here to kill you. We’re here to change your heart.”

Skull: “Think it over harder! There’s still a part of you that wants to protect her, even if it means giving up your time, right!?”

Oracle: “Watch out, Joker! He’s attacking!”

newmascotresized: This fight is what happens when I don’t have the guide up to remind me that it’s against Yoshitsune.

newmascotresized: Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to do this fight. You can certainly make it impossible for him to win (remember, Yoshitsune is a pure physical Persona with no magic) but he’ll still be annoying.

newmascotresized: Just like our Yoshitsune, he has Hassou Tobi.

newmascotresized: He also has Charge. If he manages to hit you with a charged Hassou Tobi, it’s probably going to be a game over unless Joker is immune to physical.

newmascotresized: Sure, it looks like we’re winning now…

newmascotresized: Except then, Yoshitsune uses Heat Riser and Charge.

newmascotresized: I had to pull Ann out because Yoshitsune resists fire. This attack instakills Makoto and Haru - Yusuke gets an evade due to his high agility and Joker repels phys.

newmascotresized: Fortunately, Yoshitsune is already low on HP, and having two party members go down (or trigger Endure) gives us a Showtime.

newmascotresized: The next turn, Futaba activates Ultimate Support. Everyone is now fully healed, buffed, and charge/concentrated… and Yoshitsune dies on the next turn.

newmascotresized: I really wish they had done more fights like this. The last two are against enemies that have weaknesses.

Queen: “Are you all right? Have you calmed down? It must have been hard to tell yourself that you hate your sister.”

Queen: “Huh…?”

Queen: “Does that mean… you really did hate your sister?”

newmascotresized: Well, glad that’s over. There’s nothing much else to do here but suffer through another 7 or 8 floors of randomly-generated hallways with enemies we can simply run over without fighting. Quality expansion we’ve got here.

newmascotresized: We trade our last crystal skull to Jose for a ring. That’s okay, we can just summon crystal skulls right out of the compendium now.

newmascotresized: The reason was so that I could get the last black items I need to get Sumire and Akechi’s ultimate guns… but then I decided there’s not much of a point to deleting half of Joker’s Personas just to itemize the guns.

newmascotresized: By the way, the last trophy we don’t have is for getting all the stamps. We can do that in a side update because that’s like two hours of grinding.

newmascotresized: And now, have my favorite random Mementos dialog bit so far, and by favorite I mean most rage-inducing.

newmascotresized: “It sure is cool how we follow basic character design principles for a JRPG and aren’t all anime swordsmen… except wait, we’re not because Sumire and Akechi both use swords and Joker uses a knife.”

Oracle: “This is the central data hub. This room’s most likely where the data sent over from the Palace goes.”

Panther: “Hey, what’s that on the screen?”

BlackMask: “I presume this is less about surveillance and more about looking for targets, though.”

newmascotresized: Metal Gear!?

BlackMask: “Think about it. While all sorts of unnatural events may be taking place in Maruki’s reality… that doesn’t mean every human’s wish has already been granted.”

Queen: “That’s a good point. If everyone’s wishes were already made into reality, there wouldn’t be any requests on the Phan-Site.”

BlackMask: “Exactly. Therefore, Maruki is likely choosing certain targets with this system, then affecting each one individually. Probably using the same method as when he made Violet’s Persona go berserk that one time.”

newmascotresized: Wasn’t making shit go berserk Akechi’s power? Oh wait, that’s practically non-canon because it only comes up in one scene and is promptly forgotten about, and also has zero net effect on the plot.

Violet: “Wha… me!? From what I remember, Dr. Maruki summoned these things that look like tendrils, and they grabbed me. Wait, don’t tell me, are these…?”

newmascotresized: Wait a second. A thing with tentacles that tries to put people in a world where all dreams come to life? Isn’t this just that one episode of Futurama?

Noir: “You mean to say, these cables all across Maruki’s Palace and Mementos, they’re part of his… methods?”

BlackMask: “Yes, that hypothesis explains much of what we’ve seen if it were found to be true. Maruki is extending these cables from his own Palace, tunneling into the depths of Mementos…”

BlackMask: “And spreading his influence from the same place the Holy Grail once occupied. That allows him to grant the ‘wishes’ of any people he may discover once they’ve fallen under his influence.”

newmascotresized: You might wondering if any of this is part of the argument the party will present against Maruki, and it’s not.

Skull: “Psh, screw that.”

Noir: “Mmhm! This won’t last much longer now that we’re here!”

Oracle: " 'Kay, but I’m the one who has to do the actual hacking, though."

Skull: “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Panther: “Well, the displays are showing parts of Mementos, right? I guess we can suspend something here?”

Oracle: “You got it - I like the way you think!”

Skull: “Yeah, go ahead an shut up now. We ain’t resumin’ shit.”

Fox: “Does this bring us any closer to stopping Maruki?”

Oracle: “All we did was suspend the data sharing. Stopping Maruki’s a whole other story. I don’t think this’ll interfere with his effect on Mementos.”

Queen: “What? Then what good does suspending the data stream do?”

Oracle: “According to this console’s output, all the cable-tendrils are retracted now. Possibly including someplace in the Palace that was blocked before?”

Noir: “We won’t know unless we check it out for ourselves. What say we head to the Palace next?”

newmascotresized: Why don’t we go someplace that isn’t randomly-generated filler?

newmascotresized: As a final fuck you, the game doesn’t let you warp back to the start of Mementos from this room.

newmascotresized: I hope you’re ready for being bombarded by fucking pointless IMs, because I sure as hell wasn’t.

MorganaCat: “Heh. You’d think she would be a little more honest with herself. But if you think about it… we’d never have fixed this without Futaba. If we’d just passed it off as a false alarm, who knows how much worse their lives would have gotten?”

MorganaCat: “Futaba picked up on that cry for help. She was kind enough to fight for them. That’s how we saved that family.”

MorganaCat: “Hey… that’s pretty much what the guy was saying in Mementos. I guess they really do have that sibling connection, huh?”

MorganaCat: “So. They ended up living together, huh? I can’t tell you if that’s a good idea or not, but… as long as they can remember how much they care for each other, I think they’ll be okay.”

MorganaCat: “Right… Makoto lives with her sister, too. It’s just the two of them there… I guess she’s dealing with a lot herself. She’s acknowledged her own conflicting feelings, huh? This request really made us think…”

newmascotresized: It made me think about how much Royal sucks. Seriously, who the fuck looked at this and said “This is okay. We can release this at a $60 pricepoint when it’s 60% randomly generated content.”

newmascotresized: You see, when you’re a poorly-written anime cliche, you don’t have to worry about things like stamina.

newmascotresized: We’re not doing anything tonight anyway, so let’s call it here. Next time: Sumire. Then more Sumire. Then more Sumire. Then maybe I do a side update where I get all the stamps and fight Jose. Fuck this trashfire of a game.

newmascotresized: By the way, the Reaper is available as a statue in Joker’s mind dungeon, representing how he’s actually a reincarnation of Tatsuya Sudou who is going to have a fucking rad ending where he brutally fucking murders Maruki. I wish.

newmascotresized: Fuck, I need an update title. Shit. Wait, I know.

newmascotresized: No More Heroes 2 was a good game brought down by a few terrible fights and the godawful strength training minigame.

By the way, people might be curious now that we’re nearly done with the game what my next LP will be. I don’t know. If you’ve got any suggestions, let me know.

Summary

newmascotresized: I spent like 20 minutes grinding stamps in Mementos and got to 31/40 in Path of Da’at before I realized that the wiki is FUCKING WRONG!

newmascotresized: The criteria for fighting Jose is NOT having all the stamps. It’s having at least 123 stamps collected total. We had more than that before we even reached the expansion.

newmascotresized: There is a trophy for getting all the stamps and fuck you I’m not grinding it because it’s like wearing a badge that says “I’m a dipshit who spent hours pointlessly grinding Mementos for dumbass bullshit”.

newmascotresized: Anyway, if you go back to the Cognitive Control Room, Jose is there. He gives this big long speech about the nature of man that honestly I do not give a FUCK about. It’s like 50 textboxes long.

newmascotresized: At level 90, Jose is piss fucking easy. Here’s the trick. You spam Life Wall. That’s all you do.

newmascotresized: He opens with Drift, because Jose is the writers for Royal admitting that Yoko Taro is better than them. They’re mad they didn’t get Emil.

newmascotresized: Watch out motherfucker, here comes a special boy!

newmascotresized: I didn’t capture it, but it takes about half of Haru and Makoto’s health off. You do NOT want to bring Yusuke for this because Jose resists Physical.

newmascotresized: All of Jose’s other attacks are repackaged ma-dyne spells. You know what that means?

newmascotresized: It means that every time he attacks, he takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 to 600 damage, that’s what.

newmascotresized: The rest is basic - we have Joker use Thermopylae and Ann follow up with High Energy to get everyone Concentrated.

newmascotresized: Jose has more HP than the Reaper does, which is kinda bullshit because Tatsuya Sudou could kick this kid’s ass. He casts “Knife you in the fucking gut” and it does 9999 damage and you fucking die.

newmascotresized: Boing!

newmascotresized: Have a blessed day, motherfucker!

newmascotresized: Haru runs out of SP, so I have Joker use a Soma. I imagine him stuffing a stick of butter in her mouth and then she can cast spells again.

newmascotresized: Because Haru was out of SP, we went a turn without being able to cast Life Wall.

newmascotresized: It does basically nothing even when it hits.

newmascotresized: A turn later, Jose gets serious. He uses Launch, which is a setup for a big Almighty attack next turn. We can’t reflect that, because… I dunno.

newmascotresized: Unfortunately, we can’t use this full-party Concentrate because we have to guard.

newmascotresized: What the fuck is this, Paper fucking Mario?

newmascotresized: I accidentally didn’t dodge with Ann, but it doesn’t matter because she dodged it.

newmascotresized: Jose is watching as a drunk and overtired Makoto gives him the finger and then throws a beer bottle at him.

newmascotresized: Oh fuck!

newmascotresized: Ann once again proves her worth as the best party member in this game.

Jose: “Good job all around. Sorry about that…”

Jose: “Painfully well, hahaha… thanks to all of you, I-”

Oracle: “Ooh! Didja learn something new!?”

Jose: “I’m pretty sure I understand humans less than ever!”

Panther: “Wha…”

Fox: “I was anticipating he’d say the exact opposite.”

Violet: “Yeah, I was hoping things would end on a happy note here.”

Queen: “Well, this is an issue…”

Noir: “I’m sorry we couldn’t help you.”

Jose: “Why are you sorry?”

Skull: “Well, you did say you understand humans even less now, an’ all…”

Jose: “That’s great news.”

Jose: “Humans aren’t the easiest to comprehend. That’s why they can get lost and look for other people they trust. Sometimes, they even try to accomplish the impossible with those people…”

Jose: “Like you all just tried to do for me. Now I’m sure that’s what it means to be a human. So, it’s impossible to learn everything about humans in such a short time. Although, it did make me realize just how much I love them!”

BlackMask: “So our assistance… was to your satisfaction?”

newmascotresized: And here’s the fucking throwaway “Haha guys we actually remember Persona 2” line that pisses me the fuck off. Yes, Jose is a fucking servant of Philemon.

newmascotresized: Why couldn’t they have given me a fucking scene where Philemon just fucking rolls up and is like “Pardon my idiot son” and then you beat the shit out of him?

Panther: “Hey Jose, who’s this person you keep mentioning? And while we’re at it - who’re YOU?”

newmascotresized: “I’m Igor’s replacement because his voiceactor has been dead since Persona 4 and that’s kinda inconvenient for everyone!”

Jose: “I… I am me. I’m Jose, a boy who got a little smarter, because I met all of you. No matter who we are, we’re always searching for our selves. Just remember, there are more folks observing humankind than you might realize.”

newmascotresized: Fuck you! That’s a fucking line from Persona 4’s opening! Fuck you! Persona 4 was at least an acceptable JRPG and not whatever this dumb bullshit is! Fuck! Shit!

newmascotresized: FUCK HASHINO! Fuck this game! Fuck everything!

Jose: “I knew you would! Thank you again. I have something for you - to thank you for spending so much time with me. Here. Take this.”

newmascotresized: What’s this do? FUCKING NOTHING, that’s what it does.

Jose: “Heheh… this is so interesting. Oh, humans… no wonder the others just can’t leave 'em be.”

Morgana: “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Jose: “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. See ya, guys! Thank you so much! Oh, I hope you’ll still help me collect flowers, too. Off I go! Good job!”

newmascotresized: Jose died on the way back to his home planet.

newmascotresized: What the fuck is this, a 90s primetime sitcom? Anyway, that’s over and now I can go to bed.

It’s a shame that with Akechi hanging around there’s not more pushback with him suggesting evil or just brutally pragmatic options. No “I push the guard off the ledge” or “I shoot the hostage through their shoulder” moments. Not even a “We’re going to try to change Maruki.” “YOU’RE going to try to change Maruki, if it takes longer than five minutes I’m double tapping him.”

Also I have no frame of reference because I’ve never had long hair, but do you think it feels weird when Kasumi Sumire’s hair magically gets pull back into the Kasumi Violet style when they pop into a mind dungeon?

You’ve got a repeat in the game talking about putting apples in curry, and another for the one about New Year’s resolutions.

You’d think if the party had a bunch of nulls he’d start spamming Megidolaon. That’s standard fare for pissed-off SMT bosses. I guess the Reaper isn’t a boss, but you know what I mean.

“It’s neat how modern JRPGs have clung to the classic JRPG mechanic of class-specific equipment while also boiling it down to a simplified form that robs it of its actual gameplay purpose” was, I assume, the original line, but Hashino had it changed.

Hats off to the Eternal Punishment translation team for starting and finishing a translation of Fate/Extra–a game that already has an official translation–before finishing EP.

But anyway…a game that’s suited for a screenshot LP, that I want to see, but that I don’t actually want to play or even want a friend to play for me. Let me just roll my D99 of Joke (?) Answers and see what we get. <dice sounds> And my suggestion is…Hyperdimension Neptunia???

Click Here for Update 111

newmascotresized: I read back through a couple of my more recent updates, and I’m starting to realize that it seems like I sound a little too bitter about this game - but you have to understand that this part of the game drags real hard.

Ushimaru: “…No, it’s fine. Let him sleep. Students are busy - it’s normal to be tired. I’m a little sleepy myself. I was playing pretend Featherman with my grandchild yesterday and I got a little too invested…”

newmascotresized: Bullshit. I refuse to believe he’s not reliving his glory days in the Heike clan fighting against the Genji clan.

Ushimaru: “What? You all don’t know Featherman? It’s a sentai series that teaches you about justice. We’ll watch it in class someday. …Speaking of which, did you know the concept of ‘justice’ is different in western culture and eastern culture?”

Ushimaru: “Kurusu, look at this.”

Ushimaru: “She holds a set of scales and a sword, and she’s stepping on something… do you know what she’s stepping on?”

Ushimaru: “Wonderful. That’s correct. A lot of stories tend to paint snakes as a symbol of sin, or some kind of agent of evil. In western culture, justice tends to be about enforcing the rules.”

Ushimaru: “If you want everyone to live in harmony, rules are absolutely necessary… so anyone who disrupts those rules might just end up like this snake.”

Ushimaru: “Eastern culture, on the other hand, views justice more like acting and thinking ethically. This exists in the individual. In other words… all humans have their own sense of justice.”

Ushimaru: “It’s not an easy way to live, but… I’m sure you will all be fine. Oh, time’s almost up. So about your homework… none for today! Get some rest. But make sure you’re awake for the next class, all right?”

MorganaCat: “Ushimaru’s really… I’m getting the shivers.”

newmascotresized: And now… it’s nothing but Sumire. Fuck.

Sumire: “It’s a special program that revolves around boxercising. It relieves stress, and it’s open to the public… I was thinking you could come along if you wanted.”

newmascotresized: I actually did something like that for a little bit during the pandemic - my mom bought into this on-demand workout video thing and I dropped it after I realized how dumb it was.

Sumire: “I’ll introduce you to coach Hiraguchi-san once my lesson ends. She’s an amazing person. She’s been guiding Kasumi and me since we were little.”

newmascotresized: Oh hi, Kasumi. I thought the entire plot was that you were dead.

Sumire: “It gets tough after a while. Your limbs start feeling heavier the longer you keep them up. Whenever we did this before, all I could focus on was how well Kasumi was doing. And how much I wanted to stop.”

Sumire: “Kasumi was probably so disappointed in me… I got tired out so quick…”

newmascotresized: Get used to the “10 choice” format where half the choices don’t matter.

Sumire: “I know I disappointed myself, at least. Kasumi never doubted herself for a second… and then there’s me… oh… I think it’s almost time for my coach to show up. I’m kind of nervous.”

Sumire: “You could say that. She’s tough on us, but she’s a great mentor. She’s been helping Kasumi and me for a long time. Even through all my stupid delusions as Kasumi, she never stopped helping me… I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

newmascotresized: …Why is Sumire’s coach a more-or-less accurately aged Jill Valentine?

Sumire: “Y-Yes… I’m sorry I worried you. Um, I’ve… I’ve been running away from what happened to my sister.”

newmascotresized: So what you’re saying is that this is Sumire’s… Last Escape?

Sumire: “I’m not totally back to my normal self, but I’m working towards a new goal. I want to be the best in the world… so now, I’m going to do what I can as Sumire.”

Hiraguchi: “I see… by the way, who’s this?”

Sumire: “Oh, um, this is my senpai from school. We both came here for a lesson.”

Hiraguchi: “Oh, so you’re… fine. Let’s have you go first, Sumire. You can start with your combination.”

Sumire: “Y-Yes, ma’am!”

Hiraguchi: “…Okay, you can take a break. We’ll do some more later.”

Sumire: “Phew… hah… th-thank you very much!”

Sumire: “So… how did I do? I tried to put some real force into that combination.”

Hiraguchi: “…You said you were going to perform as Sumire this time. I didn’t see that at all. All I saw out there was Kasumi… or a shadow of her, at least.”

Sumire: “Wh-what…?”

Hiraguchi: “Kasumi defined her performance by boldness, yes. But that’s not something you can appropriate for yourself. It came from the energy within her. That’s what made her Kasumi.”

Hiraguchi: “I told you to think about who you really are. Seems like you still don’t understand what I meant.”

newmascotresized: This reminds me so much of this manga I read called Oshi no Ko, which starts out as an isekai and promptly forgets that in favor of becoming a special interest manga about acting.

newmascotresized: Halfway through, the main character starts getting into fucking acting fights, and that’s the kind of shit they say during those.

Sumire: “…”

Hiraguchi: “You need to stop hiding behind Kasumi. If you keep denying yourself like this, how can she still call you her rival?”

Sumire: …“Huh!? What’s that supposed to…?”

Hiraguchi: “I never wanted to draw attention to it, but Kasumi had a very competitive streak. She hated to lose. She would always tell me… she was so jealous of her little sister, and her delicate, graceful style.”

Hiraguchi: " ‘I can’t lose to her’, she said. She wanted you to see that."

Sumire: “She… she said that? Th-that’s… impossible. Kasumi could do anything, and I… I was nothing…”

Hiraguchi: “I’ve said all I wanted to say. But I suggest you think a little harder about it.”

Sumire: “…”

Hiraguchi: “Okay, it’s your turn now! Get ready!”

Sumire: “Thank you, but I’m fine. I noticed she was quite impressed with your physical abilities. Compared to you, though… I was pitiful. Me, graceful…?”

Sumire: “Now that I think about it, I guess that’s the one thing my coach used to compliment me on. But even with that, I couldn’t match Kasumi’s performance at all. …And now she says Kasumi saw me as a rival…? I don’t believe it.”

Sumire: “I mean, all I was doing was imitating her. Even since the beginning, I was just following Kasumi… that was fine in the beginning. I loved being with Kasumi, and it was fun.”

Sumire: “But ever since I started noticing the difference in our gymnastic skills, one thing became clear… I’ll always be someone less than Kasumi. I’m just worthless after all…”

Sumire: “Thank you for saying that. You’re very kind, Senpai. Still, something occurred to me when Coach told me what Kasumi said. I realized… just like she wanted to show me what she could do, I still want you to see my own abilities.”

Sumire: “You remember? Like when I tried to show off back at the batting cages? Oh… maybe that’s what I need to chase. Maybe that feeling can help me get some confidence!”

Sumire: “It sounds like even Kasumi liked my more subtle and delicate moves, so… if I mix it with her aggressive style…”

newmascotresized: This is effectively a direct reference to Sumire’s Showtime attack. Most people are only going to see it on the day you fight Maruki, because it only unlocks when her confidant is maxed.

newmascotresized: This scene makes more sense as an unlock scene than the actual unlock scene, so let’s pretend it unlocks here. I’ll go borrow some footage.

newmascotresized: Sumire’s Showtime is the only one with a name that makes sense. Its Japanese name is “Dances with Phantoms”, and it’s less a Showtime between Sumire and Joker as much as it is between Sumire and herself.

newmascotresized: The footage was taken from this video.

newmascotresized: There’s a couple of frames of pure motion blur that are impossible to capture.

newmascotresized: It’s not a Hashino game without creepshots of underage girls.

newmascotresized: You may recognize this last shot from the Yusu-Gay I posted after the school festival. Oh, and add “The fact that Dances with Wolves was not in fact about dancing” to the list of shit the writers don’t understand.

newmascotresized: In case you’re wondering what the English name for that attack is, it’s “Dances with Thieves” which completely misses the fucking point.

Sumire: “Right? Maybe I’ll be able to step up my routine! If the key here is showing you what I can do, then I just need you to watch me again…! Senpai, will you go out with me again?”

Sumire: “Th-Thank you so much. As long as I’ve got you behind me, Senpai, I can keep moving forward.”

Sumire: “I’ll think about what else I can do. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. Oh, is it time already? Let’s get going.”

Sumire: “Coach Hiraguchi’s so strict, isn’t she? She wasn’t going easy on you at all… she used to make me and Kasumi work so hard. She was so harsh, she even made me cry a couple times.”

Sumire: “But Kasumi said she was probably tough on us because she saw our potential. Thanks to Kasumi supporting me with her strength, I kept working hard.”

Sumire: “It didn’t seem like you were struggling at all, though. You might be just as tough as Kasumi… amazing.”

Sumire: “Oh, I see… so you let the struggle fuel you. I wish I could do that. I can’t stop thinking about what she mentioned, though… my own energy, huh…? I guess I’m the only one who can find that answer.”

newmascotresized: Thank fuck that’s over. This entire situation with Sumire feels like the writers forgot she existed for half the game and realized it only when they had gotten to the end of the game.

newmascotresized: We can buy the Supernova Burger at Big Bang Burger to do the final trade in Kichijoji. This gets you a Soma, so it’s totally worth it.

newmascotresized: You know, Persona 5 Royal is a lot like how I once heard someone describe what watching Lucky Star in reverse would be like. Joker has run out of things to do, and all that’s left is to talk to Sumire.

newmascotresized: The joke is that they’re dressing Sumire like an old anime lady.

Sumire: “I see. Well, I guess it’s important to have a balanced diet…?”

newmascotresized: Joker stands there and shouts “Walk up to Sumire!”

Sumire: “Oh, Akira-senpai! I’m glad you made it!”

Sumire: “I tried this ensemble based on the staff’s advice, but what do you think? I’ve definitely been getting attention in this. Some people are even staring! This is sort of like showing off my own style, right!?”

newmascotresized: Sumire is too dumb to live.

Sumire: “O-Oh, you don’t like it? I thought it was a pretty cool outfit… well, to be honest, I could tell some of this was a little off. I mean, they say these are leopard spots, but it could just as easily be some kind of… mutant giraffe. Anyway, I should change.”

Sumire: “…So once again, I totally misinterpreted everything and made no progress at all. Classic Sumire. I wasn’t like this when I was looking for my father’s glasses… I feel like I’m doing so much worse than when I thought I was Kasumi…”

Sumire: “I don’t even know if I’m worth showing off, let alone how to do it.”

Sumire: “You’re right. I have you, Senpai. I need to make sure you see the real me… Okay. I don’t have time to be lost in my thoughts. I’ll find some clothes that’ll help me show off my true self!”

Sumire: “But still… look at how many different styles there are. Huh? Why does this sweater have a hole…? Where is this string going…? Um, what do I do now…? This is a lot harder than I thought.”

Sumire: “Hmm… this isn’t it… all of these clothes are very stylish, but I’m not sure I’d really want to be seen in them… how do I want to be seen…?”

newmascotresized: Hopefully as little as possible, because fuck I already hate you.

Sumire: “Or… how do I want Senpai to see me? Senpai… Senpai… hmm…”

newmascotresized: Seriously though, I thought Akechi’s writing sucked. This is something fucking else.

Sumire: “W-Well, yes…! But if you look at me, I don’t know what to do! …Oh! R-Right. Maybe it shouldn’t be that one-sided… if I give other people attention, then surely I’d get attention in return.”

Sumire: “I think I get it. Oh…! I think I’ll try on… this one!”

Sumire: “Um, what do you think?”

Sumire: “Wh…What!? D-Did you just say what I think you said!? You said you’re… in love…?”

Sumire: “S-Sorry, I know you didn’t mean anything by it, I just wasn’t ready, I mean my heart wasn’t, so I’m kind of- H-Hold on, I need to calm down… okay, deep breaths… hahhh, phew…”

Sumire: “B-But I really am happy to hear that. Thank you. For letting me show you a part of myself. I’ve made up my mind. Um, could you wait here for a second? I need to go buy this.”

newmascotresized: Does this event ever fucking end? Holy shit.

Sumire: “Umm, I’m not sure if I can call it an answer, but… thanks to you, I think I realized something. When I first saw that piece, I kind of fell in love with it. And um… it’s a little embarrassing to say this, but…”

Sumire: “My first thought was that I couldn’t wait for you to see me in it. I wondered what kind of face you’d make, or how you’d react… I wanted to see that side of you…”

Sumire: “Oh, um - I don’t mean anything weird by that. I just wanted to… show myself off to you, I guess. To see you, and be seen. The more I thought about it, the more important that feeling became.”

newmascotresized: Who the hell wrote this? What dipshit thought that actual people talk like this?

Sumire: “And then, suddenly, I just… realized I wasn’t nervous anymore.”

Sumire: “I’ve always been really bad at making decisions on my own… I mean, Kasumi always picked perfect things for me anyway. I never knew making my own decisions could feel validating.”

Sumire: “So I didn’t really feel a need to choose anything for myself. After all, nobody expected me to. But today, I picked something because I liked it. And I felt confident in that.”

Sumire: “Even if you didn’t like it… I don’t think that’d change how I feel about it.”

newmascotresized: You know how I can tell no one proofread this shit? I can tell because anyone who proofread this would immediately go “This conversation fucking drags” and cut half of it out.

Sumire: “Yes! And I feel great about it! Is this what Coach meant? About Kasumi wanting me to see how she felt…? If that’s true, then… did she really think I was…?”

Sumire: “Well, I can’t say for sure… but I think as long as I’ve got you supporting me, I’ll be okay.”

Sumire: “Now, we should head home. Thanks for coming out with me today. Oh, should we go buy some clothes for you next time? You could always try on that savannah ensemble. I think it might even suit you better than me… maybe.”

Sumire: “Having you watch helped me find something I really liked. Oh, um… when I say it like that, it’s actually a little embarrassing… b-by the way, where do you like to get your clothes from, Senpai?”

newmascotresized: Joker’s like “The clothes I get from dead demons are technically in a world inside my cell phone, so I’ll say that’s online.”

Sumire: “I see. Well, online shopping’s definitely convenient. But don’t you get worried? The clothes always look so different in person than they do in the display pictures…”

Sumire: “I’d love to hear what you consider when you’re picking things out. Isn’t it so fun to pick out clothes, though? That one I bought today was so gorgeous. It’s almost too nice for me to actually wear it.”

Sumire: “Though I guess that defeats the purpose, if I want people to see me in it… ahaha. Oh, I guess I’d better let you go. Talk to you later…”

newmascotresized: We spend the night sipping boyfriend juice at the club with Yusuke, because…

newmascotresized: It gets us Arms Master. One of the reasons I don’t typically use the physical-type characters in Persona games is because they can get shut down very easily - their offense is entirely dependent on their HP, whereas Ann doesn’t really give a shit how much HP she has so long as she has SP.

newmascotresized: Arms Master lowers the chances of Yusuke getting oneshotted after using skills, and also makes it harder for enemies to shut him down completely.

newmascotresized: There’s a segment on the train I’m going to skip, because it’s letting you know about the fishing pond - we did an event with Ryuji and Kawakami there once.

newmascotresized: The fishing minigame is god the fuck awful. I tried it offscreen, and it’s… bad. You have to catch fish to get bait to catch bigger fish and the whole thing is totally not worth it.

newmascotresized: We have Sumire’s Rank 9 today. Buckle up for another conversation that’s going to drag the fuck out as long as possible.

Sumire: “Thank you. I just needed to talk to you about something in person.”

Sumire: “Mm… it’s really good. Something about it is relaxing. I think I’ll be ready to show Coach Hiraguchi my performance soon. And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to be there when I do… is that okay?”

Sumire: “Great! I’m so glad… but that’s not what I came here to talk about. Do you remember what I said when we went clothes shopping? I talked about wanting you to see me, and how that helped me stop worrying?”

Sumire: “I’m so glad you remember. I was thinking about Kasumi… I wondered how she must have felt. Thinking she didn’t want to lose to me, and wanting me to watch her…”

Sumire: “Maybe that’s what we had in common. We both wanted someone specific to see our efforts - to see us as we are. As long as we have that someone watching us, we can stay strong.”

Sumire: “So I finally realized something. I think part of Kasumi’s strength came from that. …I was the one she was thinking of. I never heard her say it, but…”

Sumire: “Maybe she’d been trying to tell me through her performance. Haha… I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out… I’m such an idiot. But I’m glad I finally realized it.”

Sumire: “Even as worthless as I am, I hope I still helped Kasumi somehow…”

Sumire: “Yes… I think so too. …Kasumi’s beyond any apologies I could give her. I can’t tell her how I feel. She’ll never see me perform. That’s reality, and it happened because of me. I’ve been running away from that for a long time.”

Sumire: “But I’m done running now. It’s time to stand on my own two feet. I want to live for both of us now. For the sake of everything we wanted. I want to grow even stronger.”

Sumire: “Even if I end up in tears from failing at a meet, or if the pressure’s too much for me sometimes… with Kasumi’s confidence, and the grace she recognized in me… I’m going to keep moving up.”

Sumire: “I’m going to show Kasumi who Sumire Yoshizawa really is.”

Sumire: “Um… and so… now that I’m committed to, you know, not running away from my feelings… I, um… th-there’s something I need to tell you, Senpai!”

newmascotresized: I missed a correct answer here: the correct answer is the third one, and I don’t know why. It seems really arbitrary. I don’t think you absolutely need this one to rank up, and even if you did we have enough free days (and/or money to pay Chihaya) that it doesn’t matter.

Sumire: “Oh! I-I’m sorry! I’m getting to it! I realized it was less a matter of showing off, and more wanting someone to watch me… that is, wanting someone special to watch me. Someone I’d want to have eyes only for me.”

Sumire: “And I thought to myself, well, for me, that special person’s obviously Senpai! So… I think that means…”

Sumire: “I’m in lo… l-l-lo… I’m in… lo…”

Sumire: “Um, but… the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable, so…”

newmascotresized: This is the splitting point between the romance and non-romance routes. We’ll be promptly friendzoning Sumire, and doing her Rank 10 next update.

newmascotresized: There’s not really much content left, depending on whether people want to see the last two Mementos requests or not. We have no reason to do them, but I’ll leave it up to you.

Sumire: “…! Thank you so much, Senpai. I’m glad you could be honest with me. And I’m still happy I told you how I felt. I don’t regret anything. Even if you don’t feel the same, I’ll hold onto my feelings and let them drive me forward.”

Sumire: “Oh, but please - things don’t have to be different between us now, okay? I love and admire you as a friend, too. No matter what, that won’t change. So I’d still like for you to keep your eyes on me. Even just as friends.”

Sumire: “Just watch me, and I promise I’ll keep improving!”

Sumire: “Of course! I’ll be counting on you! Ah, and you can always rely on me too. I want to help you as much as I can. Oh, it’s already this late…? I need to get to practice…”

Sumire: “Thank you so much for the coffee. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Sumire: “My heart is still pounding, actually. I managed to tell you how I feel… that would have been unthinkable for my past self. I really feel like I’ve matured. And I’m really glad for your part in that, Senpai.”

Sumire: “I’ll always hold onto this feeling, and I’ll use it to keep moving forward! Oh, I’ll be heading out soon. I’m about to have Coach Hiraguchi watch my performance.”

newmascotresized: We’ve got another crossword puzzle tonight, and then I’m calling it.

newmascotresized: Next time, we’ll see Sumire’s Rank 10, get the rest of the room decorations, and then hopefully get to see the scene on 2/2.

Okami still fishing minigame king.

I don’t think it’s really crucial to do those last Mementos missions you mentioned. But it technically won’t be a 100% LP if you don’t…

I think that’s because they had a new person onboard who completely re-wrote the entire technical side of things - that being the same person who did the tools for the PS1 version.

Yeah I guess I’ll do them.

Click Here for Update 112

newmascotresized: We’re going to get through the first part of Maruki’s palace this update. I couldn’t finish it in one session because it is full of cutscenes and is generally a boring shitpile.

Chouno: “Well, English slang is constantly evolving with the times. Textbook English is more static. It’s so lame… but sometimes you can work out the meanings behind slang through context clues.”

Chouno: “Some are just natural extensions of English-language constructs that have already been in place for years. Others might combine normal words, or use more common phrases in new or unusual ways.”

Chouno: “Take ‘thirsty’ for instance. Ordinarily, it describes a need for a drink. That’s a pretty serious need, right? But as slang, it describes someone who’s a little too desperate. Like a boy who won’t stop asking you out…”

newmascotresized: Joker glares at Morgana.

Chouno: “Oh, and ‘hangry’! That’s when you’re so hungry, it puts you on edge, and everything makes you mad. So here’s a test! Mr. Kurusu! Would you say you’re feeling a little… salty?”

Chouno: “What would ‘salty’ mean if used in the slang sense?”

newmascotresized: If you speak English, you know the answer. I want to skip this. I want this LP to be over. I fucking hate this game.

MorganaCat: “All right, I’ll help. So we need to figure out what ‘salty’ means in the slang sense? Maybe there are clues in words like it. You can call someone ‘sweet’, right? What does that mean when describing a person?”

MorganaCat: “Yeah… you’re right. And it has a pretty positive connotation. So what kind of connotation would ‘salty’ have in that context?”

MorganaCat: “Yeah, I think so too! After all, people only describe food as salty when the salt overpowers everything else. So if it’s a negative connotation, then… it’d have to mean someone’s feeling bad somehow.”

newmascotresized: I have a hundred other games I could be playing instead of this trash fire. I haven’t even touched Shin Megami Tensei V, I never finished Metroid Dread…

MorganaCat: “And it’s probably something you can say about yourself or other people. So with all of that in mind, ‘salty’ probably means…”

MorganaCat: “Yeah, I think so too! It makes me think of someone who’s ready to pick a fight, you know? So if you call someone salty, that probably means they’re angry or resentful! Phew, that was a rough one…”

newmascotresized: At this point, I’m not even angry anymore. I’m just tired. Very, very tired.

Chouno: “Excellent! Yes, it means you resent something. Other flavor-based descriptors apply to people, too - like sweet or sour. Slang can be rooted in many origins - common words, acronyms, and of course, portmanteaus.”

newmascotresized: Actually, I’m still angry. Fuck you, Royal writers! We don’t need any more of these pointless fucking questions! There’s not even another exam because the game fucking ends in a week! Fuck you!

Chouno: “Have you ever heard of the word ‘frenemy’? It’s a portmanteau of ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’. Think something like a rival, or an enemy who acts friendly with you.”

Chouno: “So? More fun than stuffy old standard English, right? But it’s good to learn the rules before you break them. If anyone wants to learn some extra slang vocab, I would be positively psyched to offer some bonus lessons!”

MorganaCat: “Frenemies, huh…? I’ve had enough of backstabbing.”

newmascotresized: Today, we have an optional event with Haru in Tsukishima.

Haru: “Akira-kun, won’t you teach me?”

Haru: “You’re right. This is an important learning experience, after all! Oh, there are instructions here. Okay, let’s start with the basics of making monjayaki!”

Haru: “Hm? It seems underdone in this picture… is that really how it’s supposed to be eaten? This says you use the spatula to pick it up… then eat directly from the spatula…!?”

Haru: “This is amazing! I’m quite curious about the taste too! Well, we should order.”

newmascotresized: I like to think monjayaki was the creation of an angry Japanese chef who went “Fine! You fucking do it then!”

Haru: “To think you can enjoy making it in addition to eating it… monjayaki is a splendid food. However, it’s a little hard to judge when it’s ready. Sorry I burnt our last few attempts.”

Haru: “I suppose I just need to train harder. Can you still eat more, Akira? Oh! Today is the restaurant’s anniversary, so they gave me a commemorative present! Do you think you can use it to cook?”

newmascotresized: This is the Jagao Doll, the last crane game prize. Not pictured - Yusuke hurling Morgana out the window.

newmascotresized: Today, we finish Sumire’s confidant. After this, there will be nothing left to do but Maruki’s palace.

Sumire: “It looks like… my coach is yet to arrive. I’m usually so nervous when Coach Hiraguchi watches my performance. Partially because she’s worked with me for so long - that’s why I don’t want to let her down…”

Sumire: “But today… today I’m excited about this.”

Sumire: “When you compliment me like that, I feel like everything’s going to turn out well in the end!”

Sumire: “Thank you for making time to observe me today! I really wanted to get an unbiased evaluation from you.”

Sumire: “Yes, ma’am. I’m confident in the routine I’m about to perform.”

Hiraguchi: “Well, at first glance, I’d say you look like you’ve got it all figured out - but! I’m here to gauge your performance, not just let you brag about it. Now begin!”

Sumire: “Ma’am!”

Hiraguchi: “Could this be your doing?”

Hiraguchi: “You two are cute together.”

Sumire: “Thank you for watching!”

Hiraguchi: “…”

Sumire: “…”

Hiraguchi: “You’ve grown so much, Sumire. I’m sure this is no surprise to you, but the path to international success will be harsh and relentless. Are you ready?”

Sumire: “Absolutely! I WILL be the number one in the world of gymnastics! I will make our dream a reality!”

Hiraguchi: “Glad to hear you’re so sure. With your natural grace and dedication to reach the gauntlet, no matter how far it is from your grasp… your dream is no longer impossible. And, you’re the one who decided that, not me.”

Sumire: “Huh?”

Hiraguchi: “You didn’t even realize it, did you? Today’s the first time you’ve told me you will win on an international level. Until today, you’d only tell me ‘I hope I win’.”

Sumire: “Oh…!”

Hiraguchi: “And am I correct in believing you weren’t alone in this mission of yours?”

Sumire: “Coach… yes, that’s right!”

Hiraguchi: “It’s good to hear you have someone who really understands you in your corner. …Your performance today truly was impressive. I’m looking forward to your next lesson already.”

Sumire: “Happy doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel… I’m super-duper-happy right now! Thanks to you, I feel like I’ve finally found the answer I’ve been searching for…”

Sumire: “…As well as discovering what’s most important to me while performing. I genuinely can’t thank you enough.”

Sumire: “Ah… good point. I’ve only just approached the starting line. I’m sorry for repeating this to death, but I really do need to say it again… I’m so grateful that I got to meet you, Akira-senpai.”

Sumire: “I’ve learned all sorts of things from my time with you… now, I can show everyone how I really feel - and the two of us can take the crown of the gymnastics world!”

Music The Path Is Open

newmascotresized: Maria is the worst ultimate Persona. No, seriously.

New Persona: Maria

Origin: The Bible

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei NINE

newmascotresized: We have a whole list of increasingly less useful party members who have big heals, and Heat Riser sucks when you have Attis. I don’t think you can pass down any of her abilities, either.

newmascotresized: The game considers this to be 100% - this is because the final two confidants (those being Sumire’s Rank 11 and Akechi’s Rank 11) are automatic if you have their Rank 10.

newmascotresized: We also get the award for dating everyone, but we don’t get the one for not dating everyone because I didn’t bother saving after most of my re-records.

New Persona: Freya

Origin: Norse Mythology

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Norse goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. Twin sister of Freyr, who was Ayase’s ultimate Persona in Persona 1. She’s referred to as “Vanadis” in Royal, which is a different name used for Freya in the Prose Edda.

newmascotresized: The game gives you the ability to take Dodge Curse, and I do not know why. Dodge Curse doesn’t even work if you have Ali Dance, because of the way Ali Dance overwrites the normal dodge mechanic.

Sumire: “It’ll be you and me… and Kasumi. All three of us taking on the world as a team!”

Sumire: “No matter where I perform… even if it’s on the other side of the earth… it feels like you’ll still be there, watching over me. I really do believe that with all my heart!”

Sumire: “Thank you so much for coming out to support me today. I really hope we stay as close as we are on our way to the top! …Boy, my body’s still so jittery. I feel like I need to keep moving!”

Sumire: “Senpai! Please join me in a bit of extra training. We’ll start with some basic stretches! We’re going to do a full routine, so I hope you came prepared.”

Sumire: “I feel like I’ve finally managed to move past the trauma. I’m ready to be an international champion. And Kasumi… well, she’ll be right there with me.”

Sumire: "That’s why I want to turn this world back to how it used to be. I want to keep my promise to her. "

Sumire: “Great! I’ll do everything in my power to support you. With me, Kasumi, and you combined… we’ll be invincible! I’m thinking of tying my hair up again… I know it sounds a little pretentious, but it’d be proof of my resolve.”

Sumire: “Like a reminder. So I always remember Kasumi’s true feelings. …Oh, I’m sorry for talking so long. I hope we can accomplish even more together. Okay, good night.”

newmascotresized: Today, we’re going into Maruki’s palace. It’s a day early, but we have nothing else to do.

newmascotresized: Because we’ve met the criteria to unlock Sumire’s Showtime attack, we do so today. Note how lame and generic this is instead of just having it unlock during her Rank 10 or something.

MorganaCat: “Wow, you got here fast.”

Sumire: “Well, while I was travelling here, I suddenly had this epiphany… so I had to hurry over and explain it to you.”

Sumire: “Right… I’ve been wondering for a while if there’s any way I can bring some personal flair to my fights in Mementos.”

MorganaCat: “Your own flair, eh? And you came up with something?”

Sumire: “Yes! But, I do have a small favor to ask, Akira-senpai… what we’ll do is…”

MorganaCat: “I see… how interesting!”

Sumire: “I feel like… this move would allow me to honor Kasumi properly. So… how about it, Akira-senpai?”

Sumire: “Thank you! This should make for one killer routine!”

Sumire: “Oh…”

MorganaCat: “I’ve definitely never seen anything like what she’s planning - I can’t wait for this!”

Sumire: “I won’t let you down!”

newmascotresized: With that, let’s go right into the palace.

Fox: “Rather fortuitous that we tried out the console we found in Mementos - now we can proceed.”

Sumire: “Okay! Let’s go, Senpai!”

newmascotresized: The second half of Maruki’s palace is very much a Persona 1 or Persona 2 dungeon… but without the robust auto-battle options that stopped Avidya World or Xibalba from being unplayably bad.

newmascotresized: I get Akechi’s new finisher screen and then immediately dump him.

newmascotresized: As soon as we’re down the starting hallway, Morgana lets us know about a will seed. Unfortunately, before we can do anything…

Oracle: “Let’s take a closer peek!”

newmascotresized: Oh, I know! Is it… being an effective villain? Having a single coherent vision for what his dream world actually is? Writing quality? I feel like it’s writing quality.

Skull: “Gaaah, it talked! Ahem… but that’s not the part that matters now. What’s it talkin’ about, Doc losin’ something? Is this some kinda riddle?”

Oracle: “That’s a security question, like when you reset a password - only the one person’s supposed to know the answers. That’s how you end up with private information being used like a key.”

newmascotresized: …We’re breaking into Maruki’s email. Got it.

MorganaCat: “I see. So, we need information on Maruki’s life… well, this is his own Palace. I bet we’ll find some clues to the answer if we look around thoroughly enough.”

Skull: “Alright, if that’s the plan, let’s get to clue huntin’!”

newmascotresized: This part of the dungeon sucks for much the same reason that the final area in the base game did - there’s enemies we can’t insta-kill who have no weaknesses and are more of an annoyance than a challenge.

New Persona: Alilat

Origin: Kingdom of Nabatea

First Appearance: Soul Hackers

Mother goddess of several countries in the Middle East, most prominently of the Nabateans, a nomadic people who ranged from what is now Yemen to Gaza. Was one of a trio of gods worshiped in Mecca before Islam, and was thought to reside in the Kaaba (hence the in-game model).

image

newmascotresized: Alilat is a passable ice Persona if you don’t have Satan for some reason.

newmascotresized: We already know who Rumi is from Maruki’s confidant… and logically, this SHOULD be enough to tell you what the answer is to get through the door. Unfortunately, it’s not.

Violet: “What could this be…? A diary…?”

BlackMask: “Looks like it. Judging from what was written inside, it’s most likely Maruki’s…”

Fox: “It seems like he has written about things in the past, but it looks like they are only fragments of them…”

MorganaCat: “Doesn’t look like it has any meaning to it either. Not sure if it’ll come in handy for the investigation, but let’s hold on to it and see if we can find other ones.”

newmascotresized: The only reason we came in here is for this vent.

newmascotresized: The vent leads to another room where you can jump across a bunch of platforms to reach the first will seed.

newmascotresized: This door is on the other side of the area from where we found the will seed, and it’s where we need to go to progress.

newmascotresized: At this point, I’m actively running from battles because they all suck.

newmascotresized: Remember how Innocent Sin had those dungeons with cutscene rooms? Guess what this is.

BlackMask: “The entire Palace has been rather bizarre, but this room is rather strange in its own way.”

Oracle: “A CRT TV, huh? Talk about old school. Look, it’s even got a built-in VCR.”

Skull: “Hmmm… maybe we’ve gotta watch some TV first?”

Panther: “I highly doubt that.”

Fox: “Actually… there’s a chance he’s right. There appears to be a tape by the VCR.”

BlackMask: “Well, it appears we don’t have any choice but to watch the tape, do we? Of course, it could possibly just be a trap.”

newmascotresized: This is so low-effort it hurts. Remember in Innocent Sin how the cutscene rooms had ghosts in them, and the party’s watching events unfold around them? Why the fuck didn’t they do that here?

Panther: “Nothing’s happening.”

Noir: “It’s making some strange noises - could it be broken?”

Violet: “Do you think we should try whacking it?”

Morgana: “Uh, please don’t…”

Queen: “Oh, it’s playing - stay on guard, everyone.”

Maruki: “Sorry I came empty-handed… I’ve just been so busy with the research lately, I haven’t had the chance to pick up any part-time work… I know - I’ll buy you flowers the next time I come.”

Maruki: “Do you remember that wildflower field we use to go to, back in high school? You really loved it there, didn’t you? Oh - would you prefer if I brought you some snacks instead?”

newmascotresized: Do you remember the TYPO COUNTER? Seriously, “we use to go to”?

Maruki: “Which should I bring, sweet or salty? I know you like both, so… actually, I have some news for you today. So, first: I’ve finished my paper. The other thing is…”

newmascotresized: Rumi’s model might look familiar - that’s because she’s a reskinned Kawakami, from that one confidant event where you meet Kawakami in the hospital.

Maruki: “Of course, that doesn’t mean everything’s over and done with, but things are going to proceed as they ought to.”

Rumi: “…”

Maruki: “Everyone comprehends the world in a different way, depending on their cognition… so basically, if one could tap into a person’s ‘cognitive world’… one would be able to alter how that person views reality - in every way.”

newmascotresized: Thank you, writers. Truly, I would not have known what cognitive psience is, having not just played some 95 hours of the base game, where it’s explained several times.

Maruki: “…That’s what my paper’s all about. Heh, here I am, going way over your head with this stuff just like always…”

Rumi: “…”

Maruki: “But anyway - I’ve recently met soemone who thinks my research could be fruitful. If everything moves forward as planned, they may even fund my work. At that point, I’d be the first professional ‘psientist’ in the world.”

Maruki: “My goal is to find a way to stop crime by putting my research into action. Many of the criminals in this world are deluded to the point of seeing everything through a distorted lens…”

newmascotresized: Okay so here’s what I don’t get, right? Maruki clearly dated her long enough that he gives a shit that she’s in some kind of PTSD coma, but never explained what it is he does to her at any point?

newmascotresized: I also don’t get what the point of explaining this is. We already KNOW what Maruki wants - or rather, we don’t. We know he wants either a world without pain or a world where everyone’s dreams come true. One of those.

Maruki: “If I could change their cognitions, it would stop them from committing crimes before they even considered them. And if I were to succeed… the things that happened to you would never happen to anyone else again.”

Rumi: “…”

Maruki: “I want to save you… no, not just you - I want to save the whole world with my cognitive psience! Well… at least I know your family would appreciate it.”

Maruki: “Rumi! It’s me. Are you all right? Can you talk?”

Rumi: “Takuto… Fa…mily…”

Maruki: “…!”

newmascotresized: If this was competently written, it could’ve been a good scene… except it’s not.

Maruki: “Rumi!? Rumi! It’s okay… calm down…”

Rumi: “Give them back! Give me my mom and dad…”

Maruki: “…!”

Maruki: “Guh! These migraines are… dammit… don’t worry, someone’s coming to help!”

Maruki: “Phrasing… I’m so sorry, Rumi… it’s all my fault. Deep down, I knew… I could end all crime across the world - it still wouldn’t bring your family back. What you truly need is to be set free from that horrible tragedy… but, how can I do that?”

newmascotresized: There’s no way that at some point when writing the script this wasn’t supposed to be Nyarlathotep.

Maruki: “Nngh! What… what was that!?”

Rumi: “Takuto… please… stop this… I… want to… forget…”

Maruki: “Oh - but, wait… by altering a subject’s cognition - by changing their heart - any related trauma is eliminated.”

Maruki: “So, by that logic… all that pain… Rumi’s trauma and everyone else’s… it can be undone!”

Maruki: “Yes… I’ll do it. I don’t care who you may be… lend me your strength! Please… help me save Rumi’s life!”

newmascotresized: You know what game did the whole “guy makes deal with demon to revive his dead wife” thing better? Koudelka.

Maruki: “What was that!? Rumi! Are you okay!?”

Rumi: “Um… I’m really sorry, but I don’t know who you are.”

Maruki: “Rumi? What do you mean?”

Rumi: “I’ve just gone through surgery… ever since I was born, I’ve been unwell. I lost my parents when I was young, so I live with my grandparents in the countryside now.”

Maruki: “When you were… young? You can’t… it’s me, Rumi! Don’t you remember me?”

Rumi: “Um… I really am sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. Well, I’m going to be discharged from here pretty soon, now that I’ve finished my last round of surgery.”

Rumi: “I can’t wait to see my grandparents again and show them how well I’ve recovered.”

newmascotresized: God this is so fucking awkwardly written! Fuck! “Oh hello stranger, let me explain my life story to you.”

Maruki: “This is… were her memories actually revised? Wait… was that voice really…”

newmascotresized: You know, I take back all those times I shouted about “Show, don’t tell” because this sucks.

Rumi: “Um… are you all right?”

Maruki: “That’s absurd… how could something like- oh! I mean… it’s nothing. I’m just glad you’re doing better now. She remembers nothing of the incident. So, for Rumi…”

newmascotresized: This is how the dialog actually is. It’s tilted as fuck and should have been two scenes, one without Rumi in it. I get that Maruki is an awkward character, but… fuck.

Rumi: “By the way, what are you doing in my room? How do you know my name?”

Maruki: “Oh. Well, I’m… ah… sorry. I mistook you for someone else.”

Rumi: “Another person?”

newmascotresized: So wait, you explain your fucking life story first, and then ask how he knows your name and what he’s doing here? What the fuck is this shit?

Maruki: “Yeah, my… my girlfriend’s name is Rumi, too.”

Rumi: “Really? That’s so nice to hear.”

Maruki: “Yeah…”

Rumi: “…?”

Maruki: “Looks like I really messed up finding the right room - I really am sorry to disturb you.”

Rumi: “Um… so, I know this might sound odd, but if you’d like to meet again sometime…”

Maruki: “Thank you for the offer, but… I’m sorry. I’m going to be getting busier than ever soon, so I don’t believe we’ll be meeting again.”

Rumi: “Really? But, what about your girlfriend?”

newmascotresized: Wandering into someone’s hospital room looking for your apparently dead girlfriend? Totally normal. Nothing weird about that at all.

newmascotresized: I can’t tell if them forgetting the portrait here was intentional or not.

Morgana: “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was.”

BlackMask: “Based on what we’ve seen, we can surmise that Dr. Maruki’s memory was somehow on that videotape.”

newmascotresized: Akechi has been reduced to stating the fucking obvious. I wonder if they gave him this role to make people hate Makoto less.

Violet: “The way that woman was acting at the end… that’s just how it went for me, too…”

Queen: “So he rewrote her cognition…”

BlackMask: “Considering what he was saying in the video, that might have been the moment he first awakened to his ability.”

newmascotresized: There’s no reason why Maruki’s Persona works outside of the metaverse, other than that the writers seem to have forgotten that this isn’t Persona 2.

Violet: “Could Dr. Maruki possibly have wanted us to watch this memory?”

Morgana: “Eh, I don’t think that’s the case… it’s possible that this is just an old memory he tried to bury in his unconscious mind.”

BlackMask: “Still, if this actually occurred, there’s no mistaking it for a trivial memory - this is clearly important to Maruki.”

Fox: “Whether for good or bad, it appears that this incident is what led Dr. Maruki to his correct mission…”

Noir: “You’re right.”

newmascotresized: There’s a couple of locked chests in this dungeon, but we need none of them.

BlackMask: “I know the answer after watching that video… I assume you know as well? You can do the honors.”

Skull: “Aw yeah! Nailed it!”

Fox: “It’s quite thorough… and it seems that we still have a long way to go.”

Panther: “Maruki Cognitive Psience Laboratory…”

Skull: “This Palace is a lab!?”

BlackMask: “You really hadn’t figured that out yet? Given Maruki’s past and the Palace’s appearance we’ve seen so far, it wasn’t difficult to deduce.”

Skull: “Shuddup! This place is just so weird that I didn’t bother thinkin’ about it yet! You get me, don’t you, Akira!?”

Skull: “…For real?”

BlackMask: “A Palace’s appearance is based on what its ruler thinks of someone or something. In Takuto Maruki’s case, he must think of this stadium as a laboratory.”

Skull: “Yeah, I get that part - but why the stadium, of all places?”

Violet: “Oh… that reminds me of something I heard a while ago. Before starting construction on the stadium, there were apparently plans to build some kind of research facility. I wonder, could it have anything to do with that…?”

BlackMask: “It’s possible, but for now, we should focus on progress in the Palace rather than trying to answer questions.”

Skull: “Doesn’t this look like some kinda research facility to you now?”

newmascotresized: Next time, we’ll see more cutscenes, get psychologically evaluated, call Salty Vanilla because I had a brilliant idea for a Yusu-Gay, and then finish this palace.

It’d be nice one way or the other if the monkey’s paw healing his friend at the cost of her memories of him convinced Maruki that any sacrifice is worthwhile or showing that leading to him trying to manage everyone’s lives. But I’m already pre-disappointed.

Also I don’t know what I was meant to feel seeing Akechi in his goofy edgelord armor declaring “I DECIDE THE TRUTH” but I don’t think I’m feeling what was intended.

Parsing out P5’s tone and atmosphere would be the work of a more dedicated scholar than me. Back before P5 had come out, the trailers and other pre-release material felt to me kind of unsettling, even disturbing (in a good way). And some of the early finisher screens, like Joker’s, bear that out (it seems unintentional, but “The Show’s Over” next to a masked man evokes Phantom of the Opera to me). As you get later into the game, and especially by the time P5R has rolled around, I think the people in charge of aesthetics (if no one else) have figured out that we’re here to have a goof. Or whatever the JRPG equivalent of having a goof is.

Click Here for Update 113

newmascotresized: Let’s go into the next part of Maruki’s palace. You can see a save room off to the side, which we’ll ignore for the time being. This area is kind of a mini-SEBEC building, in that it has lots of stairs.

newmascotresized: This area is full of enemies. What we’re trying to do is go through all of these rooms to get to the front door, which we can use to get to the second floor.

newmascotresized: Just like the SEBEC building, this floor has multiple disconnected staircases.

Oracle: “That room’s giving off a unique reading compared to the others in the area - it might be like the video room we found. Will you try checking that out? It could turn up some clues.”

Oracle: “Although, it looks like it doesn’t open from this side, so we’re gonna have to go the long way around.”

BlackMask: “I agree with Navi. It may not be a direct route to the Treasure, but it’s definitely something. We should make that room our goal as we progress.”

newmascotresized: The door we need is on the side, and that means we have to go through the rest of this floor to get to it.

newmascotresized: There’s a will seed after the first staircase, but no obvious way to get there - the door is locked.

newmascotresized: Several rooms full of enemies later, we wind up at the next cutscene room. Have I mentioned there’s four of these? No, really.

newmascotresized: As I write this, I’ve already finished recording for the actual game content. I still haven’t done the Valentine’s Day, White Day, or Christmas Eve dates.

newmascotresized: You might ask “Do you have a Yusu-Gay for Valentine’s Day and White Day” and the answer is of course I do, what do you take me for?

MorganaCat: “I don’t like the idea of spying on somebody’s past, but we clearly don’t have a choice in the matter. If watching this is our ticket forward, then I guess that’s what we’re doing.”

Shibusawa: “You’ve come so far… what problem could they possibly have now!?”

Maruki: "I tried negotiating in person with the professor and the investors, but they simply wouldn’t listen… ‘due to the lack of concrete evidence, all further research and funding in the field of cognitive psience will cease.’ "

Maruki: “They told me it’s already over and done with. But, why now of all times? When they first saw my paper, they were positively beaming with excitement!”

newmascotresized: This is borderline Allanson dialog. “I lost all my funding - that means it’s over and done with”.

Shibusawa: “And the research lab in Odaiba… they’re not going through with that anymore?”

Maruki: “Yep… Dammit… to hell with their ‘concrete evidence’! How are we supposed to get any evidence if we can’t perform the research first? If we can change the cognition of trauma victims, their suffering can be eliminated…”

Maruki: “Who knows how many people could be saved with this research… how much more obvious could its benefits be?”

Shibusawa: “So… do you really think the lack of evidence is the reason they shut it all down?”

Maruki: “… It makes absolutely no sense to me. After all the time and money spend… to just cut off my research because it wasn’t all proven sound immediately…”

Shibusawa: “I see… so, what’re you gonna do now? The sponsors have backed out, so I doubt the college is gonna let you keep using their labs…”

Maruki: “I’m done with that college. They have nothing for me at this point. I’ll look for work elsewhere while I keep fleshing out that research paper. Eventually, I’ll prove the existence of the cognitive world… once I’ve done that, no one will be able to complain.”

newmascotresized: Maruki has drank so many beers that he can now enter the cognitive world.

Maruki: “I swear I’m going to do it. I have the power now… it cost me my life with you… so I’m going to rescue everyone from their pain… I don’t care how long it takes me…”

Queen: “Yes, I believe so. It seemed to be a much more recent memory than the first one we saw, though…”

Oracle: “His research was cut off…”

BlackMask: “So, after the incident with his girlfriend, he progressed in his research to harness cognitive psience as a healing practice… however, his research was shut down, and his career along with it.”

newmascotresized: Yes thank you I think we all saw the cutscene where Maruki stated the same thing twice.

BlackMask: “All he had left was his resolve to prove his research valid, then use it to save people… that seems to be the message delivered by the videos we’ve found.”

Violet: “It must have been his dream… to use his research to save people here…”

newmascotresized: OKAY YES I FUCKING GET IT! FUCK!

BlackMask: “If that sounds good to you, would you prefer we just turn around and go home?”

Noir: “…That isn’t an option.”

Skull: “Yeah, what she says. If anything, we’ve gotta pull out all the stops to win this one.”

Violet: “Well, the vote was unanimous.”

newmascotresized: On our way back down, we get a grappling hook sound that I was too busy running from enemies to take a shot of.

newmascotresized: The grappling hook brings us to an oversized rafter with a vent at the end.

newmascotresized: We can then smash this window, which leads us back around to the will seed.

newmascotresized: All we have to do from there is unlock the door from this side and go downstairs to the Maruki door.

Violet: “Yes! It opened!”

BlackMask: “Oh, come on… is the next question going to be ‘What’s Maruki’s favorite snack’ or something?”

newmascotresized: Now that we’re done with that bullshit, let’s go do the only good part of this dungeon, because it feels a LOT like a Snow Queen dungeon.

Fox: “This is quite the change in environment. Where are we now?”

Panther: “An exam room? Like… a hospital exam room?”

Noir: “Perhaps? What an odd place. The Shadows here aren’t attacking us. Don’t they want to stop us?”

Fox: “Strange as it may be, they do not seem hostile to us at all… furthermore, I admit I’m curious as to what this ‘exam’ entails. Joker, perhaps we can talk to these Shadows and gather some useful information.”

newmascotresized: As soon as I saw this room, I had an idea for a Yusu-Gay and paused recording to talk to Salty Vanilla.

Fox: “…Allowing intruders to proceed? How odd.”

BlackMask: “They must be awfully confident in their ‘exam’ techniques - at any rate, such progression should work in our favor. We should make sure we get our act straight for this.”

newmascotresized: There is exactly one way they could’ve made this better, and that would be by having an option to attack the shadow and fight your way through immediately.

BlackMask: “And what exactly comprises these examinations?”

newmascotresized: I’m going to skip some of the explanation, but this is basically Tokyo Destinyland from SMT 1. You touch the panel in the center, get the question, and then take an elevator based on your answer.

newmascotresized: Wait, what!? A missable reward, in what’s admittedly not the easiest puzzle in the game!? Holy fuck, is this… is this game design?

Queen: “So, all we have to do is choose the answer we believe to be correct. Although I’m hesitant to find out what they mean by ‘treatment’…”

Oracle: “Examine a person’s heart, find their pain and regret, then distort their cognition… this is just the Palace version of what Dr. Maruki does in real life.”

Panther: “Buuut, if we make a mistake, does that mean they’re going to change our cognitions?”

Oracle: “That’s probably confined to the real world - here, they probably mess with people’s heads some other way. Like, maybe they hook you up to some machine and just BZZZZZT!”

Skull: “Hey! Don’t scare me like that!”

Queen: “Well, whatever form his treatment takes, I’m sure we want no part of it for ourselves. Standing here attempting to imagine it won’t do us any good, though. Let’s take the exam and see where we wind up.”

newmascotresized: Wait a second. Is this a reference to Persona 1? A is basically the SEBEC route, where you go with Nanjo to save Mark… and then B is Snow Queen.

newmascotresized: My god. Maybe there’s hope for Persona 6 after all.

Panther: “Huh? Neither answer is wrong, though…”

Oracle: “Yeah, but this is a medical exam, not a school one. They’re trying to figure out whether or not you need treatment. So, maybe go with the answer that you think Dr. Maruki would pick?”

Panther: “So we have to try and figure out which one Dr. Maruki would pick? Oooh, this is gonna be hard…”

Morgana: “It’s hard to be sure of anything whatsoever right now… why don’t we try asking some of these other patients around here?”

Morgana: “They may only be cognitive beings, but they still have to take the exam just like we do. Maybe they can help us figure out which answer’s right.”

Oracle: “I’m with Mona. Besides, if you try and fail, at least you gave it a shot. Although, I’m not opposed to just plowing our way through the whole exam, but… if you refuse their treatment regimen, whatever it is, they’re not gonna take that lying down.”

newmascotresized: Futaba sums it up. Going the wrong way gets us a random encounter, and fuck those. We’re going to do this the right way, if only because the wrong way is boring and also I accidentally overwrote the save I made before this part.

newmascotresized: Anyway, there’s two NPCs we can talk to. They’re not incredibly helpful, and I’m going to cut some of their dialog in the interest of time.

Skull: “So you’re the type to ask others for help. I mean, that ain’t wrong, but don’t you ever think to yourself, ‘I wanna help them’?”

newmascotresized: The red text here is entirely to throw you off. In fact, this entire dialog is kinda pointless because Akechi will basically tell you what the answer is, but you’re forced to do it anyway.

Noir: “So it’s your consideration for others that made you choose ‘B’. Well, thank you for your time.”

newmascotresized: And here’s the NPC for Answer A.

Fox: “Is there a reason you didn’t even hesitate?”

newmascotresized: This bit of red text is far more helpful, and gives us another way of looking at the problem: what if it’s not about what happens to the friend, but to you?

Panther: “Yeah… stuff like that can make you feel totally horrible…”

Skull: “Even if it ends up hurtin’, it’s still better to go with whatever choice you won’t regret later. ‘A’ sounds like the right answer to me.”

Queen: “Now we know both sides of the story.”

Skull: “But neither one’s exactly wrong, right? I kinda get where they’re both comin’ from.”

Queen: “What matters is which one Dr. Maruki thinks is wrong. Why don’t we collect our thoughts somewhere and talk out our answer?”

newmascotresized: I’m going to skip some dialog here because Makoto repeats an overview of the whole test process. Of course she fucking does, she’s THE SMART GIRL.

newmascotresized: HOLD IT! That Rorschach thing above Akechi’s head… isn’t that Goatse? That’s totally fucking Goatse!

newmascotresized: We have three options. The top one is a recap of what we just heard. The second one has Akechi outright tell us what the answer is. The third one lets you immediately skip discussion. Yes, you can do that, and I’m VERY glad they let you.

Fox: “Risking yourself to help your friend or take the time to find dependable help… determining which choice is incorrect is quite difficult.”

newmascotresized: It’s actually real easy if you’ve ever taken even a high school level philosophy course. Maruki’s entire point of view is what we’d call “Utilitarian”, and what he’s asking us to do is Hedonistic Calculus.

newmascotresized: Hedonistic Calculus is an idea coined by an 18th-century philosopher by the name of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham was… kind of a dipshit. His stuffed corpse is on display in University College London, because he wanted himself to be useful even in death. No, I’m not making that up.

newmascotresized: Anyway, hedonistic calculus can best be summed up as “pleasure good, pain bad”, and is (theoretically) something we’re all doing unconsciously all the time.

Queen: “And neither choice guarantees your friend’s safety, if you think about it. Neither option seems any more successful than the other when it comes to helping your friend…”

Skull: “Hm? Whaddya mean?”

newmascotresized: In this case, the hedonistic calculus isn’t about seeking pleasure, but about avoiding pain - both outcomes have a chance at giving you happiness… but only one guarantees you never experience pain.

Skull: “Uhhh… great, Joker! You’ve totally got this!”

Morgana: “I guess he’s done thinking it over… but we should have enough information to make a wise decision. That part’s up to you, Joker.”

newmascotresized: The correct answer is B.

Morgana: “No bad news so far… I guess that really was the right answer.”

Skull: “So it’s better to just run from some shit than to try an’ help? I don’t buy that…”

Queen: “Maybe it means Maruki believes it best to find a way to avoid being hurt.”

newmascotresized: The rewards for the three questions are single-stat buffs in item form. They’re not useful when we’ve got Yusuke’s final ability and Thermopylae.

Noir: “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with this time.”

newmascotresized: I’m going to go ahead and say that this question doesn’t really work. You’ll know what the answer is almost immediately, but it doesn’t work given the version of Maruki that made it into the final game.

newmascotresized: For the rest of these questions, I’m going to use Maruki’s dialog portrait to represent the computer or whatever that’s actually giving the question because these get kinda long.

Maruki: “You have a personal dream that you really, really want to make come true. You’ve worked so hard to achieve it… but it’s just not coming to fruition.”

Maruki: “It’s causing you a lot of grief, but if you were to give up now, all of your hard work is sure to be for nothing! Which would you do in this situation?”

Maruki: “A. Keep up the hard work.”

Maruki: “B: Do whatever it takes.”

Maruki: “C: Give up for a new dream.”

Fox: “Hmm… we don’t know enough to make a decision. We should gather information.”

newmascotresized: Here’s the problem I have with this question. It would work fine if all Maruki wanted was “a world without pain” as opposed to “a world where everyone’s dreams come true”.

newmascotresized: The problem is that I knew immediately that the answer is C, but it doesn’t really make sense given that we know Maruki thinks anyone whose dreams don’t come true needs his help.

newmascotresized: The other problem is that we know Maruki faced this exact question when his lab funding got taken away, and his answer was B. I mean, he overwrote reality to save his girlfriend.

newmascotresized: Now, you could argue that this is a subtext thing where the writers are trying to say that Maruki thinks he’s fucked up, but I don’t think they were going for that - nor do I think they’re competent enough to.

newmascotresized: Anyway, let’s get on to the NPC dialog. As before, I’m going to try and cut it down to the salient points.

Panther: “What do you mean? Don’t you want to make your dream come true?”

newmascotresized: It’s like this is the developers trying to explain why Royal sucks so much.

newmascotresized: GOD DAMMIT! FUCK! Yes it would have! If the goddamn developers had put the bare fucking minimum of effort into this content instead of “here’s half a dungeon followed by hours of randomly-generated filler” this might have actually been a good game!

Fox: “I personally believe that pursuing something is a wonderful thing… I suppose it depends on the person.”

Morgana: “So, he’s avoiding dreams that might not come true because it’s easier? It’s not the worst advice, but still…”

newmascotresized: Let’s move on to the NPC for Option B.

Fox: “So you’re doing it for the money…”

newmascotresized: I feel called out.

Oracle: “Oh, so he’s flame baiting - saying outrageous stuff just for the attention.”

Skull: “Sooo, all this stuff you’re goin’ on about… basically, it boils down to you talkin’ shit about other people for money, yeah?”

Queen: “I don’t know how I should feel about all this - you spread negativity, but it’s not entirely for personal gain.”

newmascotresized: I mean, I spread negativity because all the good games have already been LPed.

Skull: “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just go already.”

newmascotresized: And now on to the NPC for Option A. Something I didn’t find out until the next question is that you can cheat here if you want - there’s a thing you can climb that lets you see into a window that leads into where the elevator for Option A goes. There’s a shadow there, so you’ll know it’s the wrong answer.

Violet: “Does that mean you have a dream already?”

Violet: “But, but - working hard towards your dream is healthy!”

Violet: “Thank you so much! I hope you make it big soon!”

newmascotresized: As before, I’ll do the second option.

Morgana: “So the question is, what do you do when you’re working hard but still can’t make your dream come true? Let’s think from Maruki’s point of view.”

Violet: “Well, in that case… Dr. Maruki isn’t just caring - he’s willing to speak up when something’s not right, too. When one of the higher-ups at the school threatened my honors status over my tournament results…”

newmascotresized: Yes, we know. We were there.

Violet: “Dr. Maruki had my back the whole time. So, I don’t think he would be okay with using a method that would bring harm to someone else.”

Noir: “Even now, he’s trying to save everyone by giving us a reality where we’re all happy…”

Morgana: “With that in mind… that would leave us with either 'A: Keep up the hard work,” or "C: Give up and find a new dream.’ "

Queen: “If the last question is anything to go by, the correct answer’s the one where you don’t risk hurting yourself. It may help to bear that in mind.”

Violet: “Keep pursuing the dream or give it up… which one would hurt more?”

Violet: “I guess we were right, but… I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

Fox: “It’s not that we agree with you - we were just trying to avoid the wrong answer.”

Violet: “Dr. Maruki thinks people should give up on their dreams?”

BlackMask: “More accurately, he thinks people shouldn’t cause themselves pain in their pursuit of dreams. Something to that effect. This exam is likely intended to filter out people who are inclined to do such a thing.”

newmascotresized: That kind of logic is how you get things like the Big Bullshit Puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3.

Skull: “My brain can’t take this shit anymore… can we just pick a random elevator and be done with this shit?”

Queen: “I understand how you feel, but we can’t give up before we’ve even tried. Come on, let’s see what our question is.”

Maruki: “Welcome back yet again! Let’s move on to the third question. You’ve gained the power to steal people’s hearts! Thoughts, emotions, information… you can steal all of it from anyone in the world!”

Maruki: “Not only that, you can use this power without fear of ever getting caught! In this scenario, which sounds closest to what you would do?”

Skull: “What the - ? Is this question about us? Well, obviously, it’s D! Let’s roll.”

newmascotresized: This question is kinda bullshit. The first two answers set a precedent that the goal is to avoid pain at all costs, but this one’s using a different kind of hedonistic calculus - specifically the kind that’s been used as a justification for torture. I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but I call it the “Jack Bauer” interpretation of Utilitarianism.

newmascotresized: The reasoning goes like this. Jack Bauer arrests a bad guy (as opposed to immediately shooting them and everyone else in a 5-mile radius because Jack Bauer is a psychopath) who is planning on blowing up a building full of people.

newmascotresized: Under this interpretation, Jack Bauer is perfectly justified in torturing the bad guy because the bad guy’s unhappiness at being tortured is outweighed by the people in the building not being bombed - and if you take it to an extreme, this is still true even if the information gained from the torture wouldn’t necessarily directly save anyone; so long as there’s a chance that it would, it’s justified.

newmascotresized: The answer is D, because in this case the potential pain of a small group is worth it if it saves society. It works for hedonistic calculus, but doesn’t really fit with Maruki’s MO - especially given that the key thing in the prior question is that causing someone else pain is unacceptable.

Morgana: “Actually USE your brain! You’re not even trying!”

BlackMask: “So, the conditions this time are that we won’t be caught, and that we can only choose one use for our ability. We should bear those in mind as we consider our answer.”

Skull: “Hey! Raggin’ on Mona ain’t cool!”

Morgana: “Yeah, thanks, but uh, I don’t think I was the one being insulted there…”

newmascotresized: There are only two NPCs here you can talk to - and a third one you can spy on.

newmascotresized: We can grapple up here to cheat.

Noir: “That’s where the elevator leads, right?”

BlackMask: “Well, they did call it an Exam Room. They could very well be monitoring the psychological state of every ‘patient’ in the room.”

Panther: “You mean they might’ve been watching us this whole time!? That’s so creepy…”

Morgana: " ‘Creepy’ is right - I just wish there was some way we could benefit from this…"

Oracle: "I don’t think this this is the right one. She answered, ‘E: Steal the one I love’s heart.’ "

Panther: " ‘Happiness gained by depriving others of their own is unhappiness…’ I have no idea what he means by that."

newmascotresized: There’s two more NPCs we can talk to, one for Option A and one for Option B. I’m going to skip the one for Option A because it’s exactly the same logic as Option E as to why it’s wrong.

Noir: “You must care quite a bit for them.”

Skull: “Family’s important n’ all, but don’tcha wanna like, do something big with your life?”

BlackMask: “It doesn’t do anyone any harm, and on top of that, there aren’t any big risks involved. If those are all the relevant factors, then this guy seems to be on the level - but it all depends on what Maruki would think.”

newmascotresized: My main problem with this question is that I can’t figure out why B would be the wrong answer, other than that this question operates on Jack Bauer logic.

newmascotresized: I don’t know if I missed something or what, but there’s no “Let’s find an answer” option here.

Violet: “I guess we passed without them finding any abnormalities… what a relief.”

Skull: “But, what’s he mean, ‘fulfilled’? He doesn’t even get that we just picked all the answers we knew they’d wanna hear!”

Queen: “Shut up, Skull…!”

Oracle: “Whoooa, so sci-fi!”

BlackMask: “Well, had we failed the psychological exam, they would have ‘treated’ us… since our answers were satisfactory, I suppose we were brought to this passageway instead.”

Panther: “Uhhh, okay, just… be careful.”

newmascotresized: So… wait. What was the whole point of the quiz if they have a brain detector hallway?

Skull: “What!? Who’re you callin’ ‘abnormal’ here!? We passed your stupid test an’ everything!”

Oracle: “Buuuut, we weren’t answering honestly. We’re gonna be seen as abnormal no matter what, considering we’re here to stop Maruki and all.”

Skull: “But that means we can’t get past here no matter what! Agh, dammit! I’m findin’ a way past this thing even if it kills me!”

newmascotresized: The way past is, of course, a vent not even five feet from the hallway.

Oracle: “Whooooa, look at those freaky machines they’re wearing!”

BlackMask: “Well, we came here from the Exam Room, so… it logically follows that this is the Counselling Room, and those people are…”

Skull: “THAT’S what ‘treatment’ is!? It sure as hell don’t look like it to me!”

newmascotresized: And of course it’s a fucking Clockwork Orange thing because the writers are fucking lazy.

Oracle: "Eh, don’t sweat it too much - they’re all cognitive beings. Let’s just keep moving.’

newmascotresized: Beyond the Clockwork Orange room is another cutscene room, except…

newmascotresized: This area has two ways you can go - you can take the stairs to where the video is, or go straight on the lower level to get to the Plot Door. Let me just say that I fucking HATE this part of the dungeon.

Skull: “Hey, those are some scary-lookin’ Shadows - make sure we don’t get caught.”

Oracle: “Looks like we’ve got Shadows patrolling the area… make sure no one sneaks up on us while we hunt down that videotape.”

newmascotresized: I’m not sure if this is randomized or not, but given that nothing else in the game is, I doubt it. Anyway, this area has a bottom ring that’s full of Fafnirs and a top catwalk you can use to get over them.

newmascotresized: This is supposed to be a stealth segment, but because we have a near-guaranteed run chance due to Hifumi’s confidant, we can just ignore most of that.

newmascotresized: Each one of these rooms has a single blue box. All but one of them contain a useless support item. Naturally, the video was in the last room I checked.

newmascotresized: For reference, it’s the first room to the left from where you enter.

newmascotresized: There’s an SP recovery item in this chest, reached through a hook point in the Chamber of Bullshit. We’re going to do the miniboss next instead of going right to the video room, just so you can see why I hate this fucking area.

newmascotresized: The miniboss is Surt, who we fused earlier to get… was it Sandalphon? I forget. Anyway, he’s another annoying blob of HP with no weaknesses.

newmascotresized: This fight sucks because Surt is either immune or resistant to everything the party members can do to him. Having bosses that resist physical in a game where half of the party members are either pure physical or hybrid physical is fucking terrible design.

newmascotresized: Surt drains Fire, nulls Elec, and resists Physical and Nuclear.

newmascotresized: I didn’t even bother changing party members, because at this point the party members are kinda obsolete. The only things that are going to do damage here are Sumire and Akechi, but even they’re not going to help much due to most of their damage being physical.

newmascotresized: Joker does nothing but use Concentrated spells with Satan while everyone else empties their guns into him.

Violet: “Whew… we did it! Everything going on here is… so bizarre, though.”

Fox: “Changing people’s cognitions and rewriting their realities as happy ones… he may consider this a form of treatment, but I would assuredly decline such a procedure for myself.”

Queen: “…Let’s move out. We need to stop Dr. Maruki.”

newmascotresized: Now that we’ve done this dumbass fight, let’s see what question the Plot Door has for us.

newmascotresized: Let me tell you EXACTLY how this should have worked. There should’ve been a thing where if you come right here and fight the miniboss, Sumire steps forward and answers this for you.

newmascotresized: Make it like the cheating bit in the last segment, where they can ignore the videotape altogether (or maybe have it spawn beyond this door if you really want to see the cutscene).

Fox: “I’ll wager this much: it won’t be pleasant. Regardless, we should watch it sooner rather than later.”

newmascotresized: I also hate this cutscene because there is one really dumb moment in it.

newmascotresized: Maruki’s like “Hello, you’re my new replacement girlfriend-wife since I broke my last one.”

Maruki: “First of all, thank you for coming to see me.”

Sumire: “Thank you for seeing me… um… I’m sorry, I’m not sure what to discuss… I only came here today because my parents wanted me to.”

Maruki: “That’s fine. So, do you wanna just chat until our time’s up, then?”

newmascotresized: “Oh, you don’t want to be my girlfriend-wife yet. That’s okay, we can work on that.”

Sumire: “Chat, huh…”

Maruki: “Of course. It’s not really possible for us to talk about things you don’t want to discuss, anyway. I’ve also got some sweets and some salty snacks there - feel free to have at them.”

newmascotresized: “They were for my first girlfriend, but she’s brainwashed - sorry, I meant dead. She’s dead and never coming back. The snacks had nothing to do with it, I assure you.”

Sumire: “Oh, yes… thank you so much.”

Maruki: “So let’s start with… ah. How about, what’d you eat for lunch yesterday?”

Sumire: “…”

Maruki: “I’ll go first. The other day, a friend of mine gave me a ton of apples. I’ve grown tired of just eating them by themselves - yesterday, I thought, why not try using them as a meal ingredient?”

Maruki: “So, I tried making an apple dish for lunch, but that didn’t turn out too hot… what do you think I ended up making?”

Sumire: “I… have no clue.”

Maruki: “Shrimp in chili sauce - with apples. You know how sweet-and-sour pork can have pineapple in it? I was going for that, but…”

Sumire: “Sounds like it didn’t work for you. Apples do make for good ingredients, though. If you grate them, you can make a surprisingly versatile sauce. I use it in plenty of my food. It’s pretty nutritious and good for digestion.”

Maruki: “You cook, Yoshizawa-san? I’m impressed that you care so much about nutrition. You must be really on top of things.”

Sumire: “…I’m just active, that’s all. I’m a gymnast. My coach has told me more than once to be conscious of everything I eat.”

Maruki: “I see… how’s practice going for you? Has it been rough lately?”

newmascotresized: It’s like someone told the writers about show don’t tell, but fucked up and turned it into tell, then show, then show again for good measure. Can anyone tell me what the fuck the point of seeing this again is?

newmascotresized: We’ve already seen Maruki brainfuck someone, and we already know what’s going to happen, so… why.

Sumire: “It has been rough… I mean, it’s nothing I can’t handle. But, it’s… not going well. I don’t even know what I want to do anymore.”

Maruki: “Sorry to hear it. Do you enjoy gymnastics?”

newmascotresized: Maruki’s extraterritorial rights are too powerful to let this cutscene end."

Sumire: “…I’m not even sure of that. My… older sister and I made a promise. We’d both compete and win the biggest gymnastics awards in the world. But… she… passed away. She protected me from a car…”

Sumire: “If Kasumi were here instead, I know she’d make her dream come true… only Kasumi could have done it. No matter how long I try to compete, it’s not going to change anything… I’m sorry…”

Maruki: “There’s no need for you to apologize in here. If there’s something you need to get off your chest, please do so.”

Sumire: “…Sometimes, I can’t help but think things would’ve been better if I were Kasumi Yoshizawa. After all… just wishing to make her dream come true does nothing for her in reality…”

Maruki: “Making dreams come true, huh… Well, I don’t think your train of thought is strange at all, Yoshizawa-san. In fact, wanting to become somebody else isn’t necessarily an entirely bad thing.”

newmascotresized: “You could become my girlfriend-wife, just like my last girlfriend-wife, only not dead.”

Sumire: “You… you think so?”

Maruki: “Everyone is capable of changing themselves - your imagination’s your only limit. That’s why, if you aspire to be more like another person, it’s actually possible.”

Maruki: “Thought exercises like ‘Would that person do this?’ or realizations like ‘That person wouldn’t do that…’ these sorts of thoughts can lead people to change themselves in ways that more closely mirror the target person.”

newmascotresized: “Hashino wouldn’t have an original thought here, that’s too much for him. I should replace this with something dumber and maybe rip off an anime or something.”

Sumire: “…”

Maruki: “Can you still imagine what your sister was like?”

Sumire: “Yes…”

Maruki: “If your sister were in your shoes, what do you think she’d do?”

newmascotresized: She’d probably die because that’s how this dumbass sports anime trope works.

Sumire: “Well… she wouldn’t cry. If she had the time to do that, she’d just practice more instead. Dr. Maruki, I… I want to become Kasumi.”

newmascotresized: Kinda wild how this escalated from “I don’t really have much to talk about” to “Hi Maruki, here’s my hopes and dreams” in like five minutes.

Maruki: “…I know. And, I’m sure you can, too. Just… believe in yourself.”

newmascotresized: Is… is that subtext? Oh my god.

Sumire: “…”

Maruki: “How about it? Are you feeling any better now?”

Kasumi: “Yes… I feel like a weight’s been lifted off of me! You’re amazing, Doctor!”

Maruki: “Haha, it’s no big deal. Still, it does seem like my counseling approach does some good after all.”

newmascotresized: And now, I hope you’re ready for this scene to take an immediate dive into the dumpster.

newmascotresized: Of course Sumire carries around a magic “become my sister” ribbon at all times, why wouldn’t she?

newmascotresized: Those glasses being prescription would explain a lot about why she sucks at gymnastics as Kasumi.

Maruki: “Really? I’m very glad to hear it. Feel free to drop by again sometime should anything come up. We can even just have a chat, like today.”

Kasumi: “Thank you. Then we could pick up where we left off talking about - hmm…”

Maruki: “Something the matter?”

Kasumi: “Now that I think about it, I’m not any good at cooking. I don’t know why I said those things earlier… my younger sister’s the one who was really great at it.”

Maruki: “… That’s right, ‘Kasumi Yoshizawa’.”

Kasumi: “…Yes? What is it?”

Maruki: “Oh, nothing. I’m so glad I was able to help you. Good luck with your training.”

Violet: “Yes. It was a counseling session I had with Dr. Maruki. It was just after Kasumi… after my sister passed away. From that moment on, I lived my life really believing I was Kasumi.”

Fox: “It was all due to the rewriting of your cognition - his ‘actualization’, as we’ve started calling it?”

Panther: “Okay, but I’ve been wondering something… so it was only Sumire who believed that she was Kasumi, right? I assumed someone in your family or one of your friends would’ve noticed you going by the wrong name right away…”

Violet: “Well, I can certainly remember being called ‘Kasumi’ by everyone else, too…”

Oracle: “It might be more accurate to say you misheard or misunderstood the name you were being called. Like, everyone kept callin’ you ‘Sumire,’ but your cognition made you hear it as ‘Kasumi’.”

Skull: “So that’s why nobody thought it was weird, including her folks and herself… damn…”

BlackMask: “This must be part of the whole ‘salvation’ nonsense Maruki’s trying to pull over on us.”

Fox: “That memory may have been kept here in video form because he truly does wish for Violet to be happy with life.”

Violet: “I admit, I really did feel saved in that moment when I became Kasumi… but at the same time, I ran from my life as Sumire… I’m genuinely grateful for what Dr. Maruki did for me, but I’m done running.”

newmascotresized: We just did all that dumb shit to answer a question Sumire could’ve answered herself.

Violet: “…We did it. I never thought I’d be the password to someone’s security…”

Fox: “Where… are we?”

BlackMask: “What a change in scenery. We were just in a science lab, and now…”

Fox: “Quite. It’s almost as if we’re in…”

newmascotresized: It’s almost like we’re in Nanako’s dungeon in Persona 4, because the development team figured “Hey, it worked for P4 and everyone liked it, why not do it a second time except without the good theme music”?

Skull: “Whoa! Look over there!”

Violet: “What on earth is going on!?”

BlackMask: “Whatever it is, it most likely has to do with Maruki’s cognition in some way. I’d say he believes anyone who undergoes his ‘treatment’ winds up feeling downright rapturous.”

Morgana: “So he actually thinks he’s sending them to paradise? Hmph. Maruki must really be convinced he’s doing the right thing.”

newmascotresized: The writers are patting themselves on the back for creating such a great villain.

Violet: “Dr. Maruki… Mona-senpai, the Treasure’s above this room, right?”

Morgana: “Yeah, I think we’re pretty close.”

Oracle: “The real problem is actually getting up there.”

Skull: “They got thick-lookin’ vines growin’ outta both sides, too… think we can use those somehow?”

Queen: “We don’t know if they’ll support our weight - I’d rather not take any unnecessary risks. The steps do extend partway upwards, so there should be some method to turn them into safe passageways. At least, that’s what prior Palace experience makes me think.”

newmascotresized: I’m going to skip the game’s explanation of how this stupid puzzle works. It’s essentially a slightly more complex version of the airlock puzzle from Okumura’s dungeon.

newmascotresized: The idea is that each walkway has a color, and is activated so long as its color is turned on. The one thing to know is that combining two colors count as activating both colors AND the combination color.

newmascotresized: In the shot above, I turned Red and Blue on to make Purple. This activates the Red walkways, the Blue walkways, and the Purple ones.

newmascotresized: The second part of the puzzle is vine walls, which activate when their color is activated. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t just kinda fuck around until I got through this. It was like 11 at night.

newmascotresized: We also get introduced to multi-color bridges.

newmascotresized: Shut up, developers.

newmascotresized: The staircase is the end of the area, but there’s a will seed here.

newmascotresized: The will seed miniboss is blocked by three vine walls - meaning you have to turn off all three colors and be on that platform to get to it.

newmascotresized: The blue switch is just off-camera, but you turn off the blue switch, then green, then red.

newmascotresized: Seeing the shadow say that makes me glad I made this a few months ago. I posted it on Twitter but I don’t think I ever posted it here.

newmascotresized: Surprise, it’s a generic-ass fight against a Fafnir.

newmascotresized: Thankfully, the game springs Sumire’s showtime on me and we win the fight pretty quickly.

newmascotresized: Going up the stairs to progress is a matter of turning all the colors on. Anyway, I’m going to cut the update here because we still have a dialog-heavy scene and my PC is starting to lag from how many images are in this thing.

newmascotresized: Next time - more cutscene, the last room decoration, and the last two Mementos requests.

Yeah, nah. We get a lot of goddamn text that I had to struggle to get through instead. That last update made me feel like I was doing YIIK again, where I had to force myself to keep transcribing dialog. I don’t know why the writers even bothered when they were pretty clearly going for The Answer 2.0.

Click Here for Update 114

newmascotresized: Yep, we’re still not done with this stupid dungeon. There’s another cutscene room to our right, so let’s go do that.

BlackMask: “This AGAIN? I really hope it’s the last one.”

Queen: “The tapes seem to be growing more and more recent, though. What do we have in store this time…?”

Maruki: “That’s a comprehensive study on the research you tried to shut down ‘all these years’ ago.”

Maruki: “Oh, this is just a quick visit out of spite. I wanted to show you in person that I had found the ‘concrete evidence’ you had discontinued my research over.”

Maruki: “Ah, no can do, Professor. Cognitive psience has made too great an impact on this world to be abandoned like that.”

Maruki: “The psychotic-breakdown incidents, the sudden changes of heart in adults that the Phantom Thieves claim to make… I’m nearly willing to call these events ‘concrete evidence’ of cognitive psience in action - how about you?”

Maruki: “He seems to be confessing to all sorts of crimes now that the Phantom Thieves have changed his heart. Years ago, Shido took notice of my research, stole it away from me, and made others develop it for his own gain.”

Maruki: “Not only that, he used cognitive psience somehow to induce the politically motivated psychotic breakdowns. Now, you’re heavily involved in that series of events - aren’t you?”

Maruki: “Oh, nothing at all. As I said before, I only came here out of spite. That paper - my work - is going to change the world.”

newmascotresized: I wish Maruki had a fucking spine and was written by writers who also had spines and did not immediately kowtow to the focus groups.

newmascotresized: Metal Gear!?

Maruki: “That paper there’s just the first step. I’ve learned how to change the cognition of not just an individual, but all of humanity! And I WILL do it, no matter how long it takes!”

newmascotresized: God dammit. The line should’ve been “I’m going to change the world. You’re not going to be in it.” and then Maruki fucking kills him.

Maruki: “Huh? You… you don’t see this? The sky just-”

Maruki: “This voice…”

New Persona: Azathoth

Origin: Cthulhu Mythos

First Appearance: Giten Megami Tensei

Ancestor of most of the Cthonic pantheon in the Cthulhu mythos. This includes Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, and Yog-Sothoth. Yes, this means they gave this dipshit a demon that should have been reserved for a direct sequel to Eternal Punishment. Yes, I am fucking pissed about it.

Maruki: “The other… me? Wait - the realm of mankind’s hearts… are you telling me, this realm is…”

Maruki: “…! That’s it… I… finally get it. To think it’d be so… heheh…”

Maruki: “…Yes. I’ll be on my way. Finally… now, I can finally…”

Fox: “To think he was the one who stymied Dr. Maruki’s research…”

Oracle: “Y’know, I’ve been wondering ever since we saw the earlier video… Do you think there was some connection between my mom’s cognitive psience research and Dr. Maruki’s?”

BlackMask: “After he crushed Maruki’s chance at researching the field, he had his own pawns do it for him instead… although, I doubt Shido’s researchers knew anything about the subject in the way Maruki did.”

BlackMask: “…That sounds exactly like the kind of plan that man would scheme up.”

Skull: “That bastard! …Wait, now’s not the time to get pissed about that.”

Morgana: “There’s another thing about that video nobody’s mentioned yet… that being that appeared near the end was most likely Maruki’s Persona.”

newmascotresized: No shit.

Queen: “If the sky did turn red like that… I wonder if that was the day we fought against the God of Control?”

Morgana: “Lady Lavenza did tell us that reality and Mementos were merged together during that time… as you’ve all seen for yourselves, a full awakening to a Persona can’t happen unless you’re within the Metaverse.”

newmascotresized: Can we please just drop the Dark Hour/TV World/Metaverse bullshit and go back to Persona 2 again for Persona 6, just so I don’t have to listen to another ham-fisted explanation like this again?

Morgana: “That would mean Maruki really did awaken to his Persona in that video.”

Queen: “And at the same time, he attained the ability to meddle with Mementos… the cognition of the masses. So it is just as Lavenza has told us…”

Noir: “The sheer number of coincidences necessary for this to happen is just…”

BlackMask: “At any rate, now we have a better grasp of past events. I’m fairly certain that was a memory Maruki wouldn’t want us to have seen, either.”

Oracle: “Yeah!”

Noir: “We don’t have the time for these questions anyhow. Let’s go!”

Noir: " ‘The day the sky turned red?’ It must be referring to Mementos merging with the real world. We’ll leave the answer to you, Joker."

newmascotresized: By the way, the wiki claims that there were originally going to be TWO MORE cutscene rooms - one where the Treasure is, and a second one that plays when you give Maruki the calling card. Thank fuck those didn’t make it in.

Oracle: “…This is probably the final hurdle. This looks like a tough fight, so make sure everyone’s in peak condition first!”

newmascotresized: The final miniboss is Siegfried, who happens to be the second-highest level Faith Persona. This fight sucks a lot less than the last one did.

newmascotresized: Siegfried starts with Charge and a number of physical skills. He nulls physical and resists gun and ice.

newmascotresized: This means we can simply do the usual buff/concentrate/attack combo for insane amounts of damage. At half HP, Siegfried will switch to much weaker electric spells and Concentrate, but we don’t really see that.

newmascotresized: Naturally, the game gave me a Showtime when the boss was at double-digit health remaining.

newmascotresized: Welcome to the treasure room. The game doesn’t tell you its name yet, but it’s Psientific Model Eden.

Violet: “This is…”

BlackMask: “I assume Maruki’s trying to convey that the world will turn into something like this if we allow him to abuse his research.”

Noir: “A paradise…”

Morgana: “No doubt about it - that’s our Treasure!”

Queen: “That also means we’ve secured our route.”

Skull: “All right! All we got left is sendin’ the calling card - oh, wait. How are we supposed’ta do that this time?”

Noir: “That’s right, Dr. Maruki’s been here in the Palace this entire time, hasn’t he?”

BlackMask: “I’m sure Maruki’s well aware that the Phantom Thieves send out their calling cards the day before their heists.”

BlackMask: “Considering his actions up until now, I highly suspect he’ll attempt to directly intervene in some way that day… my money’s on him trying it with Joker.”

Fox: “Good point. In that case, I’ll leave the calling card in your hands, Joker.”

BlackMask: “We could just set up an ambush and destroy him once he steps in our trap, too.”

Skull: “No way are we doin’ that!”

newmascotresized: The one time I agree with Akechi.

Queen: “Our goal in coming here is to return reality to its original state, not to beat up Dr. Maruki.”

BlackMask: “It was merely a joke. After all, you’re all well-aware that Maruki’s influence on reality goes well beyond this Palace… if we make the wrong move in here, we could get eliminated outside the Palace, since we lack our Personas there.”

BlackMask: “It’d be a safer strategy to change Maruki’s heart, just as you all wish.”

Panther: “We’re finally changing his heart… if we steal Dr. Maruki’s Treasure, everything’ll go back to the way it was, right?”

Morgana: “I don’t know for sure, but most likely.”

Panther: “Yeah! Of course.”

Noir: “We’ve all come so far… we can’t just give up now.”

Skull: “We gotta stick to our own reality.”

Queen: “About the time limit - Dr. Maruki told you it was February 3rd, correct?”

Morgana: “Yeah. He isn’t like anything we’ve faced before… we should get as strong as we can before that fight.”

newmascotresized: Joker promptly tells Futaba to fuck off.

Hiruta: “All diseases of incredible strength. They resist all our cures, and yes, some can even kill… but there’s one disease we do not fear. We even welcome it. Any guesses?”

Hiruta: “It is the disease we call happiness… heh, did you think I was only being dramatic? A scientific study suggested the emotion of happiness spreads in much the same way as a disease does…”

newmascotresized: This is accurate, depending on interpretation. It’s based on data derived from the Framingham Heart Study (which has been running since 1948) from 1977 to the early 2000s .

newmascotresized: The Framingham study is a very large study about cardiovascular health. Part of that study had participants take the CES-D (Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Index) test.

newmascotresized: The data on ‘happiness’ was derived from people’s answers to the CES-D. To explain, the CES-D asks you how many times in the last week you’ve felt certain things. Two of those questions are “I felt happy” and “I enjoyed life”, which is probably what they based this on.

newmascotresized: What the meta-study by Harvard Medical found was that people within three degrees of separation had a higher chance of being happy if they knew a happy person (or a person who knows a happy person).

Hiruta: “Now then, Kurusu-kun. How far did this study suggest personal happiness can spread?”

Hiruta: “Wonderful. That’s correct. It would seem your own happiness can indirectly affect the mood of your friend’s friend’s friends. Their finding suggested that happiness is spread through connections and physical proximity.”

newmascotresized: This is also true - the Harvard Medical study showed the effect lessened over distance and with time. I don’t know if they’ve done any follow-up studies on things like Twitter or Facebook.

newmascotresized: But don’t worry, apart from this game being boring and mediocre, I’ve got something that’ll stop that dead in its tracks: the YIIK twitter account has announced that the 1.5 patch is coming “soon”.

Hiruta: “Under these principles… perhaps it’s not impossible to create a world in which everyone can be happy. …But I can’t bear that thought. A world of endless, uninterrupted peace…?”

Hiruta: “That’s a terrifying idea! Where’s the thrill in a world without strife, despair, agony!? Without unhappiness, there is no true happiness… I don’t want to live in a world that boring.”

newmascotresized: What is this guy, Junko Enoshima? I mean, they’re both in games with godawful plots.

Morgana: “This guy never changes…”

newmascotresized: Here’s the first of the two optional Mementos requests we can do. The trigger for these appearing is clearing Maruki’s dungeon.

Morgana: “So he’s doing borderline illegal stuff in some goofy mask? Cramping our style, AND making life hard for people… we gotta shut this guy down, for all their sakes too!”

newmascotresized: This is the second to last crossword in the game, and is just as pointless as all of the other ones.

Morgana: “So this dad’s obsessed with an indie idol, huh? Well, we’ll need his name before we can do anything else. I guess we should go to Akihabara and try gathering some information.”

newmascotresized: This request is special in that it gets you a uh… ‘special’ reward on the very last day. We’ll go investigate the one in Kichijoji first.

Morgana: “Hey, they’re talking about AlMaask Ouzi. Let’s listen in a bit…”

Morgana: “So AlMaask Ouzi’s little brother has a last name of Amasaki… and he’s got haters? That’s concerning. They’re apparently hanging out in Harmony Alley. Let’s go take a look.”

Morgana: “…Those guys are bad news. I’d never be able to relax if they were after me. And ‘AIMaask OUZI’ is an anagram of his real name? That’s some interesting info.”

newmascotresized: And now, let’s go do the other investigation in Akihabara. This one is MUCH shorter.

Morgana: “Lily-nyan… do you think this is that idol, Lilina? That name came up in the post about the dad that’s obsessed with indie idols!”

Morgana: “Well, we’ve got his name now, but we don’t know if he’s the parent of our client… let’s go ask him.”

Morgana: “Let’s find out if this is the dad who’s overly obsessed with an indie idol.”

newmascotresized: I feel like this sidequest is supposed to be some kind of low-key reference to Satomi Tadashi. I hope there’s one for Hashino in Persona 6.

newmascotresized: I hope Satomi Tadashi is enjoying his retirement where all he does is be horny for idols all day.

newmascotresized: This guy reminds me of an attorney at work who just died. Dude was kinda creepy, but died of a heart attack due to what was presumably a combination of his wife hating him and his job being trash.

Morgana: " ‘He’s got no place at home’ and ‘He wants to get involved in his kids life, but he can’t.’ He’s got an unstable family situation, but he’s still fixated on that idol… looks like we’ve got the right guy."

newmascotresized: Anyway, there’s one more thing we can do today - and that’s the event that will get us the final room decoration.

Futaba: “I’m so happy! This is gonna be so much fun! Let’s go!”

Futaba: “Honestly, I wanna live here. Wait, there are tons of people… but, but… all of this still gets me excited! Seeing it in person is way different than images online!”

newmascotresized: Didn’t we take her here at least twice as part of her confidant?

Futaba: “Come on, let’s go check out that extra-thin laptop everyone’s been talking about lately!”

newmascotresized: This feels like it takes place in 2008.

Futaba: “They said it was ‘full of functions,’ but I’m not really seeing it… I don’t care anymore. Do you understand how I feel?”

Futaba: “That’s right! They betrayed me! I had super high expectations for what the evolution of electronics was gonna look like… but all I saw there was an empty slab of metal.”

Futaba: “Oh well. There’s no point in getting depressed over it. There’s still gotta be some unseen treasure waiting for me in this electronic paradise! Let’s go explore, Akira! We’ll start on the underground floor! To the escalatorrrrrr!”

Futaba: “I already have three of them though, so you can have it, Akira. It’s a present!”

newmascotresized: There’s also a reference to Innocent Sin on the TV tonight.

newmascotresized: I mean, it’s basically the plot of Innocent Sin, only they didn’t let Nyarlathotep win.

newmascotresized: And with this, Joker’s room is complete… about two months before he leaves Tokyo forever.

newmascotresized: I intentionally skipped the 29th and the 30th because we don’t have that much left to do.

newmascotresized: A few new encounters show up in Mementos after you clear Maruki’s palace, including super Jack Frosts and Pyro Jacks with their weaknesses removed.

newmascotresized: The other common enemy group is a triple fight with a Yaksini, Dakini, and Kali. The dumb part is that you can’t negotiate with any of them.

Skull: “So you’re Amasaki! You seriously don’t give a damn about how much trouble you’re causing your family?”

newmascotresized: This fight is over before it even starts.

newmascotresized: Amasaki wastes his turns calling in Legions, which… are a complete non-threat. They exist purely to make the fight take longer.

newmascotresized: We merely spam multi-target Bless attacks until everything dies.

newmascotresized: Even once Amasaki is down, you have to take the Legions out to finish the fight.

newmascotresized: On our way to the next target, we run into another gimmick encounter - Mara and his two sons.

Skull: “Come on, man. You know that’s not right, don’t you!?”

Oracle: “He’s in no condition to listen. Watch out, Joker!”

newmascotresized: This fight was probably originally meant for way earlier in the game. It’s a dialog battle that’s over in one attack.

Skull: “I get idols are important… but that’s not everything in life, right? We need to tell 'im that there’re more important things in life. Here’s the stuff we know 'bout him.”

Skull: “He’s got no place at home, and he wants to get involved with his kid’s life, but can’t.”

Oracle: “And that’s what got you into idols… he might think he stopped caring about how family, but we all know that’s not the case. Tell 'im, Joker.”

newmascotresized: Well I mean, no, you’re still some middle-aged guy obsessed with idols and you’re going to lose the lead writer position for the SMT series to an incompetent fuckwad.

Skull: “But now you know what you’ve gotta do, right?”

newmascotresized: Just like Satomi Tadashi, this guy learns NOTHING.

Skull: “So you’re not gonna stop chasing her… well, I guess it’s not a bad thing to have a hobby. Become a dad your kid can be proud of.”

newmascotresized: And that’s it. That’s all the Mementos requests. So… what’s the reward for doing this one? It’s well-hidden and I haven’t recorded it yet, but you can find Lilina in Akihabara on the last day after defeating Maruki. She gives you an item that gives you a song in the Thieves Den. It is the worst.

image

Morgana: “Guess that’s one family that we’ve saved. I can’t believe that dad was so far gone, though. We better watch our step around idols.”

Morgana: “Looks like he gave everyone a proper apology. That’s great! Not that an apology is going to make things instantly better, but… now it’s up to him to make things right.”

newmascotresized: We’re going to skip 02/01 for the most part, but we have an IM conversation and the final crossword puzzle today.

newmascotresized: Welcome, once again, to The Last Day. Today, we’re doing the final two confidant events in the expansion. From here, all that’s left is to kill Maruki.

newmascotresized: Anyway, if you maxed Sumire’s confidant, you get a second IM today. This IM is the only way to get to her Rank 11 - Sumire isn’t even on the map today.

newmascotresized: I sure hope you’re ready for THE SAME GODDAMN EVENT for the eighth time!

newmascotresized: …Wait, why is she her sister again? I thought she got rid of the magic become-my-sister ribbon.

Sumire: “Thank you. People always say a messy room means a messy heart, so… um… I asked you here today because I wanted to tell you my decision.”

Sumire: “This is where Kasumi and I promised each other we’d be the best in the world. …Pretty much everything in here is the same as in Kasumi’s bedroom. The colors are different, but not much else.”

Sumire: “That’s how it always was. Kasumi kept saying we should get the same styles, the same clothes…”

Sumire: “Yes. So… when I lost her, I… I just went into shock. I can talk about it now that I have some distance from it, but before, I was too…”

newmascotresized: You know, it just occurred to me - why is she wearing her scarf inside?

Sumire: “And because everything happened the way it did, I found ways to go back to being Sumire, one step at a time. I think… I really needed that time I spent as my sister. That’s why I’m grateful to Dr. Maruki.”

Sumire: “And that’s why I have something to tell him, too. Or rather… I want to show him that I found a way to face reality. If Dr. Maruki sees how far I’ve come… I’d like to think it might give him the strength to do the same.”

Sumire: “Yes! I’ll be the strongest Sumire Yoshizawa I can be!”

New Persona: Ella

Origin: Technically Greece

Persona 5 Royal Original

In some adaptations of the Cinderella story, the protagonist’s first name is Ella.

newmascotresized: Ella’s final ability is Masquerade, which is one of the best Physical skills in the game. It’s a pity that it gets wasted on a Persona that has no access to Charge.

Sumire: “Thank you so much, Akira-senpai. If I hadn’t met you, I’d never have found the strength to face myself. I hope we’ll always be able to count on each other. That way, I won’t ever lose myself again.”

Sumire: “Yes! We can help each other reach new heights!”

newmascotresized: I think that’s actually Sumire’s shortest confidant event. It didn’t say much, but at least it wasn’t another 10-choice fuckstrosity.

Sojiro: “Well, I know it’s a bit early, but I think I’m gonna close up shop for the day. We were so busy today, I ran out of all my ingredients. I don’t even remember the last time that happened. Weird, huh?”

Sojiro: “Anyway, don’t forget to lock up.”

Maruki: “This is Maruki, by the way. I’m actually rather close by… would you mind lending me an ear? There’s something important we need to talk about.”

Maruki: “…And, if you do intend to confront me, I believe there’s something you have to give me first.”

Maruki: “Thank you. I’ll be at the cafe shortly. See you later.”

MorganaCat: “I caught all of that. Just as we suspected, he knew he’d have to get a calling card. I have no clue how this meeting is going to go down…”

MorganaCat: “Hey, ah… Akira? Just make sure you keep your guard up, okay?”

Maruki: “How’s Yoshizawa-san holding up? I’ve been concerned about a potential relapse, considering her difficulties with accepting this reality.”

Maruki: “…You know, I would love for that to be the truth. But, people can’t maintain their strength forever, Kurusu-kun. So… getting down to business…”

Maruki: “I wanted to confirm with you one last time: is there no other way to come to an agreement besides fighting?”

Maruki: “The reality I created may seem distorted from your point of view… but it’s a reality where everyone can be happy. If you just stay, you’ll never have to suffer the pain of loss, or the pain of having people and things stolen away from you!”

newmascotresized: I think you’re about a decade late to stop people suffering the pain of Loss, much less the pain of Dominic Deegan or Something Positive.

Maruki: “So… you saw what happened with Rumi. I’m not the one who suffered - she is… but she’s still living a wonderful life right now… in this world you call a ‘distorted reality’.”

MorganaCat: “But she still doesn’t remember you, right? And you’re fine with that?”

newmascotresized: That’s one thing I never really understood about Maruki. If Rumi meant so much to him that he has giant statues of her in his head, why didn’t he just make it so her family never died? After he took over reality, I mean.

Maruki: “She may not be in my life anymore, but at least her own life is a happy one now. I’m not just doing this for Rumi - I want all of you to live just as happily as she is.”

newmascotresized: You just fucking said that! Fuck!

Maruki: “But for Rumi’s happiness to last, I have to move on. After all that’s happened to her - to me - I just can’t drag her into it…”

MorganaCat: “Doc…”

Maruki: “My stance will not change. Strange circumstances have led to my gaining this power - however, I now recognize it as being wholly inevitable.”

Maruki: “This is something only I am capable of doing. I promise: every person alive will be happy in the world I create. So, let me ask you the same: after really considering every option, do you have any doubts about your views?”

newmascotresized: Oh, right. You have an opportunity here to get the bad ending - it’s exactly the same one I already posted, just without the time skip.

Maruki: “I suppose it’s more accurate to ask, ‘Do you two gentlemen have any doubts?’ You’re here, aren’t you? …Akechi-kun.”

Akechi: “…You caught me.”

Maruki: “Oh, it was just a hunch. This issue doesn’t only affect you, Kurusu-kun… Akechi-kun, this involves you, too.”

MorganaCat: “What do these two have to do with…?”

Maruki: “The relationship you two share is very unusual… a detective and a phantom thief. Despite being enemies, your relationship isn’t based on hatred or ill will…”

newmascotresized: You know what I would have fucking loved? Have Akechi fucking slam his hands on the table and outright tell Maruki he isn’t Joker’s soft gay pancake boyfriend.

Maruki: “That’s why I found it so tragic when I learned what happened in Shido’s Palace…”

newmascotresized: Wait, what. How the fuck does he know about that? That happened before his Persona even fully awakened, and he wasn’t there.

Maruki: “Say, Kurusu-kun… didn’t you regre how things ended with him? You two came to a deep understanding of one another… yet you had no choice but to leave Akechi-kun to his fate.”

newmascotresized: Joker stands up and slams the table. “HE’S NOT MY GODDAMN BOYFRIEND! YUSUKE IS!”

Maruki: “That’s why I created a reality where you two could have a fresh start together.”

newmascotresized: This is the one thing Royal’s writers didn’t immediately fold on. Akechi is fucking dead and never coming back.

Maruki: “Get what I’m saying? I genuinely didn’t want to tell you like this. I didn’t want to make it seem like I’m holding him hostage…”

newmascotresized: Can’t hold him hostage if no one wants him.

Maruki: “But no matter what you may think of me, I just want you all to accept this reality and move on with your happy lives.”

Akechi: “…And that matters how, exactly? Don’t tell me you think dangling my life before us is going to have any impact on our decision.”

Akechi: “Well, I lacked conclusive evidence… but after I fought against you all, I had a gap in my memory that ended with meeting up with Akira again.”

Akechi: “There were also the cases of Wakaba Isshiki and President Okumura… of course I’d find all of that suspicious.”

Maruki: “I see… I had a feeling the truth of the matter still wouldn’t dissuade you, Akechi-kun. But how about you, Kurusu-kun?”

Maruki: " ‘You think dangling my life before us is going to affect our decision?’ That’s what Akechi-kun said a moment ago. If that’s how you see it at this point, I’m fine with it…"

newmascotresized: Stop fucking repeating shit! Fuck!

Maruki: “But I’m still going to ask you, one last time: will you accept the reality I create for you? You were the guiding light to my research. You showed me the way I could make my dream into reality.”

Maruki: “I have nothing but gratitude for you - not a single ounce of ill will. That’s why I wanted you of all people to understand…”

Maruki: “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you for an answer on the spot like that. I’ll be going now.”

newmascotresized: Maruki never reads the card, but someone on the Megami Tensei wiki translated it. It reads:

"Takuto Maruki has committed the great sin of creating an overblown self-righteous reality granting people’s wishes. However, we will not soak ourselves in this false happiness, and we will overcome our pain and move forward. As a result, we will not accept your proposed salvation - and therefore, we will steal your distorted desires and take back our future.

From, John Persona."

Maruki: “I’ve heard your calling. And, about my question - let’s do this… I’ll be waiting in the Palace tomorrow, just as I promised. If you still haven’t changed your mind by then, we’ll meet there.”

Maruki: “But if you don’t show, I’ll take that to mean you’ve accepted my reality. …See you.”

Akechi: “…I’d like to speak to Akira.”

MorganaCat: “Akechi… gotcha. I’ll leave the decision up to you, Akira - let me know when you’ve reached an answer.”

Akechi: “I refuse to accept a reality concocted by someone else, stuck under their control for the rest of my days.”

Akechi: “All you have to do is stick to your guns and challenge Maruki. Or, are you really so spineless that you’d fold over some bullshit, trivial threat on my life?”

Akechi: “Then you already know what needs to be done… I want to hear you say it aloud. What do you intend to do?”

Akechi: “I won’t wait a moment longer. Answer me.”

newmascotresized: This is the last opportunity to get the bad ending. I’ll borrow some footage after this to show the other bad ending off, which happens if you haven’t cleared the palace by 02/02.

Akechi: “All right. I’m relieved to hear it. I will never accept this form of reality. I’m done being manipulated. Let’s go back… to our true reality.”

New Persona: Hereward

Origin: An Actual Person

Persona 5 Royal Original

Hereward the Wake was an English noble who fought against the Normans in the 11th century, leading a resistance cell in several areas of eastern England. Historical sources are contradictory on what happened to him - some state that he was captured during a siege by the Normans on the Isle of Ely, while others state that he escaped to Scotland. May have been the inspiration for Robin Hood.

newmascotresized: Akechi’s final skill is USELESS. The only thing you’ll be fighting with it is Maruki… who is a purely multi-target boss that can’t be downed. You also can’t get this earlier than 02/02.

newmascotresized: Next time, we take on Maruki in what is probably the most annoying boss fight in the game.

Click Here for Update 115

newmascotresized: Here we go. After 16 months, we’re finally ready to fight Maruki.

Haru: “It’s time… our final battle.”

MorganaCat: “Maruki came by Leblanc last night, so we gave him the calling card.”

Akechi: “I doubt Maruki is still interested in discussion. You realize there’s no backing out now, right?”

Ryuji: “Heh, ain’t no way we’re gonna run now. We’re gonna confront Doc in his Palace, show him what’s up, and go back to our own reality - right, Akira?”

Sumire: “Right!”

Yusuke: “It appears we’re all ready.”

MorganaCat: “It’s time to take back what belongs to us: our own reality!”

newmascotresized: Maruki’s Palace has a new theme that plays in place of Life Will Change here. It uses a remixed version of Life Will Change’s music with different lyrics.

Music I Believe

newmascotresized: I don’t like it compared to Life Will Change. It feels like it’s in the wrong game, and doesn’t fit in with the other two John Persona character songs. It feels like something Shoji Meguro had in a closet from the Persona 3 days.

BlackMask: “Well, we can finally move on now that we’ve got some stairs. Let’s end this.”

Violet: “…Right!”

Morgana: “Once we pass through here, we won’t have any choice but to confront Maruki. You ready, Joker? All right, let’s do it!”

newmascotresized: Wait, isn’t this just 3-2 from Demon’s Souls? The part right before you fight the Maneaters with the black phantom mindflayer on the spiral stairs.

newmascotresized: I also feel like the “Apple with a bite out of it” thing is a little too on the nose. I get what they’re going for, but still.

Marukevil: “It looks like I have your answer.”

newmascotresized: You know what doesn’t make sense to me? Why is it that Maruki has a different outfit in his palace? He does have a Phantom Thief outfit, and this isn’t it.

Marukevil: “That’s good to hear. Now…”

Marukevil: “If you win, my heart will be changed… however, if I win… my reality becomes the true reality. I will overwrite all of existence with my own cognition… I’m not holding back anymore.”

Panther: “Wh-What the…?”

Marukevil: “Just as you have your own beliefs, I too have no intention of changing my plans for reality. No matter what happens to me in the end, I will fix this torturous world!”

newmascotresized: I hope you’re ready for Maruki’s Phantom Thief outfit, because I wasn’t.

newmascotresized: Yusuke immediately recognizes a fashion crime when he sees it.

newmascotresized: Yes, Maruki is wearing tights and heels, because these are exactly the kind of things a final boss wears.

newmascotresized: PFFFFT. Look at this dipshit! Tights, heels, and a goddamn turtleneck. They had to censor the rest of it with that robe because otherwise people would just turn the game off here.

newmascotresized: Seriously, what the fuck would you even call this outfit? It’s like tights mixed with a turtleneck and a fucking thong. And why the fuck is he wearing heels to a fight, other than that he’s a dipshit?

newmascotresized: Okay so seriously, when do we get a real final boss and not whatever the fuck this shit is?

Morgana: “No way… so Maruki really does have a Persona!”

Dipshit: “I’d regret not pointing this out to you… you shouldn’t mistake our powers as being equal. It’s time, Azathoth… our final battle has come.”

Violet: “Dr. Maruki…”

Dipshit: “I have to do this…”

newmascotresized: No you don’t! You could totally take that outfit off and put something on that doesn’t look like it was designed by an indie fashion ‘expert’ who got told they had a good idea once and let it go to their head.

Oracle: “Incoming, guys! Get ready!”

image

newmascotresized: Maruki’s fight is a mix of the second half of Kaneshiro’s fight and Okumura’s fight. In this first phase, there’s three tentacles - one Tentacle of Protection, one Tentacle of Assistance and one Tentacle of Healing.

newmascotresized: Each tentacle has a set of weaknesses and nulls or repels everything else. The protection tentacle is weak to physical, the assistance tentacle is weak to the elements, and the healing tentacle to Nuke/Psy/Bless/Curse.

newmascotresized: We can do all of that, and in the first phase, it’s not too hard to handle at all.

newmascotresized: The annoying part is that Maruki has a move called Shield Tendril that will either null all damage done to him (if all the tentacles are alive) or reduce it if at least one is dead.

newmascotresized: You’re supposed to use Sumire for this part, but I found it easiest with our usual setup. Ann hits the assistance tentacle, baton passes to Yusuke to hit the protection tentacle, then Yusuke baton passes to Makoto to finish off the healing tentacle.

newmascotresized: In this case, I think I baton passed to Joker instead and merely nuked half of Azathoth’s HP in one go.

newmascotresized: I then passed to a Concentrated and buffed Makoto, who did the rest of the damage. This is the easy part of the fight… well, one of the easy parts.

newmascotresized: Maruki’s second phase is EXTREMELY FUCKING ANNOYING.

Oracle: “Huh? He’s getting stronger!? Be careful!”

image

newmascotresized: In the second phase, we get the vocal version of Maruki’s theme. It’s not terrible, and I don’t mind that it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the game given that it’s Maruki’s character song.

newmascotresized: Remember Final Fantasy Tactics Advance? How absolutely no one liked that game because it had the stupid rule system where you’d be randomly prevented from using certain units? GUESS WHAT’S BACK.

newmascotresized: Phase 2 is basically Phase 1 but more annoying. The tentacles now shift their affinities every turn, meaning that there’s no way to know what their weakness is. Given that they null or repel everything that’s not a weakness, this makes fishing for them pointless.

newmascotresized: You might also notice in the corner that we’re no longer allowed to use magic skills, which invalidates three-quarters of the current party and makes damaging Maruki nigh-impossible.

newmascotresized: Because of Maruki’s bullshit, we can only hit Azathoth for 1 HP. By the way, you’re hitting Azathoth this whole time and not Maruki, even though Maruki is a target. Why?

newmascotresized: The answer is that Maruki has crazy defenses and if the Tentacle of Healing is alive it will heal him for thousands of HP at a time. I’m not even sure why he’s a target.

newmascotresized: What’s kind of hilarious is that Akechi is USELESS in this fight. Stage 2 is the majority of the Maruki fight, and he has a full-party Bless attack that will feed him free press turns if you have Akechi with you.

newmascotresized: Maruki then has his tentacles heal him and buff his damage, because we have no way of damaging them.

newmascotresized: Oh, and have I mentioned that Maruki revives the tentacles on his turn? He does. The only good news is that a dead tentacle will revive with its resistances in the default state.

newmascotresized: So yeah, this fight sucks. The one thing that makes this fight not total bullshit is that the tentacles can land on the same weakness, which will come up in a minute.

newmascotresized: Maruki also has a full-party physical attack. Between Ali Dance and Yusuke’s ability, we have a pretty good shot at evading it… except here it decided to crit on Joker.

newmascotresized: There is a strategy for being able to kill all of the tentacles, and that’s by using every possible element on them at least once. The game will let you know when the tentacles are weak to something you’ve already tried.

newmascotresized: In this case though, we get incredibly lucky: all three tentacles are weak to curse.

newmascotresized: For the first time, we land a hit for more than 200 or 300 damage.

newmascotresized: The next few turns are mostly me killing two tentacles per turn and then hitting Azathoth for damage. Every turn, there was one weak to fire and one weak to physical - so I’d hit those and then baton pass to Joker if I could… as one of the restrictions Maruki can hit you with is no baton passing.

newmascotresized: Once his HP hits a certain threshold, Maruki starts doing this shit.

newmascotresized: He’ll target a single party member, just like Okumura did. The difference is that there’s an easy way to avoid this - you simply switch out the targeted party member. I didn’t bother, because fuck engaging with game mechanics.

newmascotresized: If you don’t switch out, Maruki uses an attack called Piercing Strike, which is basically Hassou Tobi only it hits 20 times and does Almighty damage. It’s a guaranteed instakill.

newmascotresized: He can’t target Joker with this for obvious reasons, so there’s that at least.

newmascotresized: In the Yusu-Gay route, it is absolutely canon that Yusuke responds “I already have one!” and hugs Joker.

newmascotresized: The rest of the fight is me nickel and diming Maruki to death… until…

newmascotresized: Tyrant Stance is followed by an attack called Tyrant Chaos, which is functionally identical to Megidolaon. What may not be obvious is that Tyrant Stance gives Maruki an automatic Concentrate.

newmascotresized: Anyway, the party was pretty fucked up and Maruki had healing restricted, so I didn’t bother guarding with Ann.

newmascotresized: So yeah, that’s another instakill if it hits you.

newmascotresized: Some five or six turns worth of nickel and diming later, we finally get Azathoth down. There’s a 40-turn time limit on this fight, and I think we used at least half of it.

Oracle: “Finally! His Persona can’t act anymore! Now’s your shot, Joker!”

newmascotresized: At this point, Maruki’s HP is lowered to1 and any hit will finish the fight.

Dipshit: “Azathoth… did I… fail?”

Morgana: “…It’s Maruki’s Treasure.”

Noir: “What is it, though? …A torch?”

BlackMask: “A torch is a light to guide people - it may symbolize his perception of himself as the guide for the entire world. We’re here to change his heart, aren’t we? Go on, take it.”

newmascotresized: I’m surprised they didn’t have Akechi explain the entire apple thing.

Dipshit: “So… this is it…”

Oracle: “This place is collapsing!”

Fox: “We’d better take our leave.”

Dipshit: “No, I… I can still…!”

newmascotresized: They just ramped it from like 50 feet up, there’s no way everyone isn’t super fucking dead.

Violet: “Dr. Maruki…”

Panther: “This has gone too far past changing someone’s heart… is he even still alive?”

newmascotresized: Holy shit look at Akechi’s neck. I’m pretty sure necks don’t bend like that.

Dipshit: “I’m sorry - you know I can’t do that. I’ve been chosen by the world itself… granting this wish is my responsibility!”

Panther: “Ah! He just - the Treasure!”

newmascotresized: I hope you’re ready for a dumbass Attack on Titan reference. Fuck that shit anime.

newmascotresized: Oh look, it’s the Dumbass Titan. I didn’t know Maruki was Anime German.

New Persona: Adam Kadmon

Origin: The Kabbalah

Persona 5 Royal Original

It’s kind of hard to explain what Adam Kadmon is. In Hebrew myth (as well as several other Christian and Gnostic sects) there’s a belief that when the Judeo-Christian God created humanity, he first made a spiritual being called Adam Kadmon (literally “Primeval Man”) that represents what happens when all of the sephirot come together. Adam Kadmon is kind of like an Archetype in Jungian psychology that all of humanity is modeled on. There are some Judeo-Christian sects who believe that Jesus is the personification of Adam Kadmon.

newmascotresized: You have no idea how many things I had to read to get a basic understanding of that, because there’s so much jangly key man bullshit.

Violet: “You’re wrong!”

Oracle: “Yeah! We refuse to let it end any other way, too!”

newmascotresized: The third phase of the fight is a DPS check, plain and simple.

newmascotresized: All of the party’s HP and SP are back, and Maruki spends the first turn being practically invincible.

newmascotresized: But you know what he isn’t any more? Immune to physical damage.

newmascotresized: Maruki will always use his first turn to cast Origin Light, an Almighty attack that is more or less Megidolaon. It wipes half the party’s HP (or more).

newmascotresized: We’re doing very little damage for being Concentrated, and the reason is that Maruki still has a really high magic defense - this is a scripted fight for the most part.

newmascotresized: When Maruki’s HP reaches 75%, he’ll stop using Origin Light and use Revitalize Soul. This does a fixed 300 damage and heals Maruki for 1200 of his 3000 total HP. The HP regen is per-target rather than based on the amount of damage he does.

newmascotresized: The game also has a thing to stop you cheesing Maruki’s heal. If you beat Maruki’s first two forms alone, the party will be automatically filled in for this part.

newmascotresized: From this point, all Maruki will do is use Grand Palm until he dies or you do. His defense and magic defense have dropped significantly.

newmascotresized: This means we can unleash another Hassou Tobi for shitloads of damage.

newmascotresized: Of course, it wouldn’t be Attack on Titan if Maruki wasn’t a Titan Shifter.

newmascotresized: Holy fuck, is this Akechi having some common sense?

newmascotresized: Unfortunately, Akechi’s shot is deflected by a tentacle. You know, it’d fucking rule if this kind of thing ever worked. Imagine FF8 if Irvine killed Edea on Disc 1.

newmascotresized: Joker looks at Akechi. “If he makes a Wonderwall reference, shoot him.”

newmascotresized: “What if he - oh wait, I’ll just shoot him anyway.”

newmascotresized: Sumire looks about the same as how I felt at this point. I think I had been recording for like two and a half hours.

newmascotresized: This final phase of the fight is 100% scripted.

newmascotresized: I don’t think it’s possible to lose this fight - from what I understand, your party will always survive Full Force no matter what.

newmascotresized: Just like before, Adam Kadmon has insanely high defenses and somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 HP. It’s not possible to win this fight - all you can do is watch.

newmascotresized: Maruki does another cycle of charging and then using Full Force, before…

newmascotresized: Wait a second, isn’t this just that scene at the end of Majora’s Mask where the four giant stop the moon?

newmascotresized: What the hell kind of grappling hook is Joker using that he can throw through solid metal, and more importantly, why wasn’t he using it as a weapon instead of his knife?

newmascotresized: And here it is. Joker’s got his Deagle-Brand Deagle again, it’s time to fire the final shot.

Dipshit: “I gave up everything else… I dedicated all that I have to this… but I still… why?”

newmascotresized: That’s not how you do it. This is how you do it.

newmascotresized: What Joker’s saying is that maybe you should’ve known the truth instead of wondering ‘why’.

newmascotresized: That is, unfortunately, the second time I’ve had to reference a Linkin Park song.

Dipshit: “…Heheh. You nailed it. It’s true that I turned my back on the original reality… but where’s the harm in that!? When it grows to be too much, too painful… every person deserves to escape that!”

Violet: “…”

Dipshit: “In all honesty, it’s best for a person’s growth when they tackle their own hardships… but reality doesn’t always make that feasible!”

Dipshit: “No matter how much you try, or work for so long, the smallest injustice can wipe it all out, leave you with nothing…”

newmascotresized: Stop fucking quoting Linkin Park! Fuck! I hate those fucking dipshits!

newmascotresized: Anyway, this is the argument the writers are going to make against Maruki and his reality. Not that it would be impossible to please everyone, nor that Maruki was effectively declaring himself a god… but that it inhibits character growth.

Morgana: “You know, there probably are plenty of people who’d ultimately benefit from your ‘reality’. But what about the people who want to take on the world themselves? How’s it right to rob them of their opportunities?”

newmascotresized: They had the opportunity to at least take one of the more sensible routes out of this, and went for the dumbest and most anime bullshit explanation possible.

Violet: “Some people want to run from their pain and cling to some other version of reality… like I used to.”

Violet: “But the knowledge I gained through that pain, and my desire to move on… those are even more precious to me! And I won’t let anyone take them from me again!”

Dipshit: “Yoshizawa-san… so you truly don’t want it… huh… looks like I’m totally finished.”

newmascotresized: It’s been collapsing for several minutes by this point.

newmascotresized: There’s a line here I missed.

newmascotresized: I have absolutely no idea how the fuck this makes the slightest bit of sense. Joker was in the middle of Ryuji and Yusuke.

newmascotresized: Wait a second, wasn’t this the final scene of Resident Evil 5? You know, where Wesker grabs the helicopter and you have to do the final input of launching two rockets at him at once?

newmascotresized: Clearly, T-posing will negate all fall damage. It’s just science.

Dipshit: “…This place is done for. Along with the entire reality I dreamed of… I… have lost. Even if I were to try that fight over, I’m sure I’d only lose again.”

Dipshit: “I’ve been holding this all in for so long, just hiding it from myself… so, please… help me kill every last one of my regrets. You’re the only one I can ask to help me with this, Kurusu-kun.”’

newmascotresized: Joker’s thinking “God dammit, the one time I get to be sparkly and Yusuke isn’t here.”

Marukevil: “The disappearance of my Palace - of the entire Metaverse - is drawing near. Seems like neither of us can summon our Personas anymore.”

newmascotresized: There are a lot of games that have used fistfights as the coda to the plot to great effect. Take the Snake/Ocelot fistfight in Metal Gear Solid 4, or the final boss of Dead Rising.

newmascotresized: So yeah, this is a dumbass, anime-as-fuck, pointless fucking turn-based fistfight between Joker and Maruki. I think Joker’s portrait in the bottom-right is new for this.

newmascotresized: The difference between those fights I mentioned earlier and this is that those fights had an impact. They felt like struggles. This feels like a dumbass cutscene that has no reason to exist.

newmascotresized: After three or so turns of this shit, it’s over.

newmascotresized: How did that pen stay in his pocket the entire time? Also, why is he making a stupid fucking face?

newmascotresized: Did Brian Allanson guest animate this?

newmascotresized: You know what would have had a fucking impact here? If Maruki did the Geese Howard thing and batted Joker’s hand away. Maybe have a line like “My death… is on your hands now. This is what you wanted.”

newmascotresized: Wait a second. How is it that Maruki’s glove hasn’t slipped off?

Igor: chuckle “Magnificent.”

Lavenza: “Not only have you taken back mankind’s future for itself… but you’ve also re-established our reason for existence. While reality had been wholly distorted, your actions have guided it back towards what it ought to be.”

Lavenza: “That is correct. Time itself cannot be rewound, but every past event will revert to the event that should have occurred instead.”

newmascotresized: There’s two flashbacks here I’m not going to bother to post - the first is Sae telling Joker to turn himself in on Christmas Eve, the second is to the scene on 02/02 with Akechi.

newmascotresized: I picked this answer for a reason.

Lavenza: “Everything will return to how it should be… everything. There are no exceptions.”

newmascotresized: Akechi is canonically dead. He is not coming back. Please keep this in mind for the next update.

Lavenza: “Have your regrets begun?”

Lavenza: “It seems you are still resolute in this matter. Choosing such a path must not have been easy for you… for that, you have our utmost gratitude and respect, Akira Kurusu.”

newmascotresized: We’ll stop here for now. 125 fucking hours into this game. How the hell did I even… anyway, we’ll do the final cutscenes next update… followed by the penultimate Yusu-Gay.