Colors Flying High - Let's Play Persona 5 Royal

Before this update came out, I was talking to my friend about P5 and how silly it was you had to go to Kamoshida’s Palace three times. Then he reminded me that you have to find the Palace’s treasure, then leave and come back to fight the boss. But we’d both forgotten that Ann also has to awaken her Persona - and everyone knows that awakening a Persona calls for a nice nap afterward - so make that five times.

For years you’ve been asking “How do I make a 100-hour JRPG?” This is a 100-hour JRPG speaking. I’m the game who refused to take away your dungeons and thus destroyed your world. In the past, others have claimed to be 100-hour JRPGs, however that was only if you did all the sidequests and post-game content, and let’s be real here that doesn’t count. If you wish to be a 100-hour JRPG then come, buy all my spinoffs, and follow me. And also deliver all your exposition at least twice.

I’m excited to see why because literally every fan opinion I’ve seen is the exact opposite. Everyone enjoys Motorcycle Justice Kamen Rider Per5ona.

I mean I don’t know if it’s ever confirmed she is in a coma or not he might definitely just be lying.

More or less correct. The Chinese “shujin” stands for Husband, Master, and Host, while the Japanese “shujin” also covers those EXCEPT for husband, where instead shujin is “another’s husband”. A polite way of saying “your husband”.

And so it begins…

L’Amoureux. The Lovers. Unlike the typical Lovers, this card depicts a fued; a love triangle with Cupid’s spiteful arrows inciting love regardless of consequences. This is one of the Tarot cards that are most obviously “corrupted” or “unusual” compared to the standard. Unless you’re okay with being in a polycule in which case go at it. It’s also worth noting that the original card frames the third person as a sort of priest who is marrying the two off; given the context, less so in this Jokerfied version.

I wanna just grab Morganna by the head and just be like “you realize that just because her psyche form is a cat doesn’t mean she IS a cat, right?”

Le Bateleur. The Magician. Sleight of hand trickster, mountebanc, or otherwise. While The Magician represents someone who is coming into their own, discovering their abilities and finding a way to use them for good, Le Bateleur is more of a scoundrel. Not that that’s evil of course, but it’s a more self serving sense of learning what your abilities are. You are learning to build tools to cause problems on purpose. The “corrupt” symbolism here is obvious in the fact that Le Bateleur’s alchemy table is covered in blood.

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Oh no, Kamen Rider Per555ona!? But that show is terrible! And also…looks really cool… The pieces are coming together. Everything is connected…

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I just wanted to mention while addressing mail that I found out today there’s an LP of Royal that started just over a week after this one on a different site (I think it’s on SA and it’s on some “lp beach” site I’d never heard of until yesterday) by the person who did the LP of the base game that’s on the archive. I’m not killing this LP even if it competes with theirs because they hate this game for the wrong reasons and aren’t doing a 100% run anyway.

So here’s the fun part. When I did this game the first time, I didn’t know about the whole “every dungeon takes a minimum of 2 days to complete” bit and assumed it was just like P4 where you had to clear every dungeon in a single day if you wanted 100%.

I was incredibly stingy with my SP and barely made it to the cutoff point thinking I’d still have to fight the boss. Thankfully, I didn’t.

Oh, her DESIGN is amazing. It’s the writing (as usual) that’s the problem, but we won’t be seeing her for a few months yet.

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I think “I’m going to stop because someone else is doing it” is silly. You probably have some unique takes regardless, unless it’s like… Metal Gear Solid Phantom Pain, where there is just a definitive experience you can watch.

Aah, okay.

Also I love that since this is an RPG and a Persona game, I have no idea if you mean in or out of universe months or not. Probably both!

Click Here for Update 7

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We made it. The game sort of does this in a pattern - there will be several long story days and then a bunch of shorter ones, and we’re more or less out of the first lump of exposition.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is more or less another tutorial. On some days, Joker can get a seat on the train and read a book. This means we are going to want multiple books on us at all times, as we’ll have to read through most of them for social stat gains.

Morgana: “Doctors have the best medicine, huh… hey, wasn’t that one customer back at Leblanc a doctor?”

Morgana: “That’s not important here! Though she did have an interesting fashion sense… it might be nice to have some strong medicine to use in the Palace.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: With the extra money from my P5 save, we might just be able to buy some. The all confidants route in the base game required that you spend all of your money on social stats in the beginning.

Ryuji: “Let’s head to school together. I mean, it’s right there, but whatever.”

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Ushimaru: “You! Pay attention! Is that how you listen when someone’s talking to you!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s hard to capture, but Ushimaru throws a piece of chalk and hits Joker right in the head. His uncanny throwing skills are a reference to Inspector Zenigata in Lupin III Red Jacket - in Red Jacket, Zenigata has a pair of handcuffs on a rope that he throws.

Ushimaru: “That’s what you get for daydreaming! Kids these days have no respect for their elders.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is one of the handful of checks that you can’t make the first time around. Unlike Persona 4 though, this check does show up again and when it does, we’ll probably have the stats to dodge it.

Ryuji: “Mkay, let’s get goin’!”

Morgana: “Hold on, it’s still too early for us to head to the Palace.”

Ryuji: “But why? Don’t we just gotta steal that Treasure thing?”

Morgana: “Don’t underestimate the dangers of that place. We need to prepare.”

Ryuji: “Ain’t that Persona shit we got enough to deal with it?”

Morgana: “That’s exactly what I mean when I say don’t underestimate it. You’ll die if you mess up in there. So again, we need to prepare before we head in.”

Ann: “But how exactly are we supposed to do that?”

Morgana: “I’m glad you asked, Lady Ann. First, we’ll need to find better equipment for all of you.”

Ryuji: “You talkin’ about weapons? Oh, I know a kick-ass place!”

Morgana: “In that case, you handle that side of things. The only other thing would be stocking up on medicine. Fatigue is unavoidable in a Palace…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What’s funny is that Persona 3 actually had a fatigue mechanic where your character would get fatigued if you went into the dungeon too much, but they’ve long since done away with that. I remember watching a stream where the streamer got hit with fatigue and kept reloading their save trying to get the fatigue to go away by taking a piss (which has a chance of removing it).

Ann: “And where can we get medicine?”

Morgana: “Don’t worry. I know just the place. I hope you look forward to it, Lady Ann! Now then, Akira and I have some business in Yongen, so let’s head off for today!”

Morgana: “Just come with me! I won’t be able to get close enough by myself!”

Morgana: “The doctor who prescribes medication after a quick examination? She was sitting at the booth…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: At times I swear it feels like Innocent Sin is trying to break through. Doesn’t this feel just like Innocent Sin, where we’d do this and then go to Todoroki and spread a rumor that’s like “The goth doctor at the clinic sells medicine out the back door.” Then you go there and she sells cans of femdom.

Morgana: “I just realized something. If she’s the kind of doctor who gets sketchy rumors like that, maybe she’ll help us out. She’s somewhere in the neighborhood, right? Take me to her.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Tae’s clinic is right across the street from Leblanc.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The dialog loops if you pick anything but the first option.

Morgana: “Well, I guess that’s our only option. We’ll just have to go for it. All right, let’s step inside.”

Tae: “Hm? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I should mention that Tae is basically a clone of the protagonist of Trauma Team, another Atlus game I’ve never played because all the Trauma games control like shit. They even have the same VA in English. Trauma Team’s main character was also a goth doctor with the same issues that we’ll see Tae having. Originality? In a game written by Hashino? Nah.

Tae: “Hmmm… well, whatever. So, what are you here for today?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: John Persona instead uses this as his excuse. “I am lethargic. I have spent the past three days doing nothing but teleporting bread into a desert in New Mexico without eating or sleeping.”

Tae: “…Fine. Please head to the exam room.”

Tae: “I’m going to prescribe you some pain relievers, okay? Actually, I still need to restock those…”

Tae: “So let’s go with sleeping pills instead. Sleep is the best medicine anyway.”

Tae: “Which type of pill do you want, a sweet-tasting one or a bitter one?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I was kinda tempted to pick that last option but I don’t think John Persona has hit rock bottom just yet.

Tae: “How about a stinky one then? Just kidding. There’s no such pill. All right, why don’t we stop beating around the bush…”

Tae: “I’m guessing you’re here because you heard the rumors about me, huh?”

Tae: “Who’s to say? But as a result, all I get are patients with ulterior motives now.”

Tae: “I guess high school kids have it tough nowadays too, huh? Well, fine. I’ll prescribe you some medication.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Somewhere, Eikichi and Lisa are just looking at each other going “Okay, which one of us made the new world so that instead of modern medicine, the doctors just cast Diarahan and Me Patra and call it a day?”

Tae: “I guess it’s fine. You seem pretty earnest, and you don’t look like you’ll be in any trouble. This is my private practice. All the medicine I dispense is original.”

Tae: “I have a license to make my own formulas. You’ve likely seen them being sold at various hospitals.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I swear, Atlus has no idea what a doctor does. What Tae is doing is drug development. This is done by people who have completely separate degrees from an MD - so it’s highly unlikely that she’d have a license to practice medicine.

Tae: “You have a responsibility to take care of yourself. So if that’s okay with you, stop by anytime.”

Tae: “Great. It’s nice that you’re so quick on the uptake. Saves me the hassle. You’re a pretty weird kid, you know? I wonder what you’re going to use the medicine for…”

Tae: “Well, as long as you don’t cause me any trouble, it’s not my problem.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We then get Tae’s shop menu, which reminds me a lot of No More Heroes. All of her medicine is insanely overpriced and I’m pretty sure I made it through the entire game my first time without ever buying any.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Note that we have 55,251 yen and most of that is from the save bonus. If we didn’t have that, we’d have a grand total of 5,251 yen… and we need to spend more than that on social stats in just the next few days to avoid a permafuck. Permafuck is the term I’m going to use for “a situation that would make it impossible to get 100% confidant ranks”. Yes, you can permafuck THIS EARLY IN THE GAME.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’ll break this up by talking about permafucks some more. I looked at the guide, and getting 100% is a living nightmare in Royal. Not only do all the party covenants now max at 11 instead of 10 (requiring extra time) but we will have maybe 3 days to spare at the end assuming absolutely everything goes perfectly. In fact, as we’ll see a bit later, Atlus had to make changes to a lot of the confidant cutscenes just to make it possible to 100%.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: A… legendary drug, you say? Please keep this in mind for the next time we see Tae.

Morgana: “Sounds like they were talking about something dangerous… could that woman be hiding some extra strong medicine?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: She’s hiding the femdom equivalent of quaaludes.

Morgana: “I agree! If it’s that strong, it might come in handy at the Palace. All right, let’s come back when that man isn’t here.”

Morgana: “We shouldn’t involve people who have nothing to do with this. Keep the Phantom Thieves a secret, okay? Anyway, great work! That went really well!”

Morgana: “We might be able to get our hands on some decent stuff if this store really has model guns. Well, we can leave that for tomorrow. Let’s go home!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This morning is a glorified tutorial, so I’ll be skipping large parts of it. Today, we’re going into Shibuya proper.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This guy is Toranosuke Yoshida. He’s basically Anime Bernie Sanders, even though the two people the wiki claims he’s based off (he’s named after a Meiji-era politician but he’s really based off a former LDP politician) would both probably hate Bernie Sanders. Fuck the LDP, by the way.

Yoshida: “While Japanese society may appear to be thriving, many young people have not been as blessed as their elders. They have no jobs, no savings, no financial security whatsoever.”

Yoshida: “These young people should be tackling their futures head-on, but instead they’re too busy merely trying to survive.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is more or less one of the actual arguments regarding Japan’s birth rate: people aren’t having kids because Japan’s economy has been more or less stagnant since the 1990s, wages aren’t increasing, costs of living are going up, and no one can afford to have kids. In reality, there’s a lot more to it, particularly involving Japan’s attitudes toward women.

Ryuji: “Eh, people give speeches all the time. Plus, politics are pretty boring anyways.”

Yoshida: “…Strange incidents are occurring. What is the cause of them all? The runaway train incident, the mysterious psychotic breakdown phenomenon… these are all signs of the end of our once peaceful days.”

Yoshida: “Now is the time for our politicians to show their strength, and yet…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Untouchable is owned by a guy named Munehisa Iwai, a reference to a gunsmith during the Warring States period who supplied Nobunaga with guns.

Iwai: “… You lookin’ for recommendations? I dunno, just buy whatever looks interestin’ to you.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: John Persona looks Iwai right in the eye and goes “I want the anime gun.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Iwai comes back and with one dismissive look, John Persona goes “No. The ANIME gun.”

[image credit: /k/]

9_2iVBrO_400x400: With beads of sweat dripping down his face, Iwai returns with the most anime gun he can find. John Persona takes one look at it. “No. It’s still not anime enough.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Iwai, shuddering, heads to the back room and makes a phone call.

[image credit: /k/]

9_2iVBrO_400x400: John Persona nods in approval. “Yes. The anime gun.”

Iwai: “Fine, whaddya want? An automatic? A revolver?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’ll have two number nines, a number nine large, a number six with extra dip, two number 45s (one with cheese) and a large soda.

Ryuji: “Uh, automatic? Dude, why’re you talkin’ about cars now!?”

Iwai: “Listen, this here’s an enthusiast shop. My regulars’ll be mad if I let a casual like you hang around.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Look kid, there’s a two anime girl minimum on each gun, and you don’t even look like you could handle one.

Ryuji: “I’m not a freakin’ casual! I bought shit from here like, last week!”

Iwai: “Huh, can’t remember you.”

Ryuji: “You bastard…”

Iwai: “And you? Lookin’ for somethin’?”

Iwai: “Anyways… you should said before you two’re enthusiasts. I’m always up for helpin’ fresh faces. Some precautions first though: don’t go ‘round pointing ‘em at other people. Keep ‘em in a bag or somethin’ if you’re outside. Oh, and don’t let the fuzz catch wind of you having’ em. I don’t need them comin’ around here.”

Iwai: “How 'bout that? Me too. Now, if you look close, you’ll be able to tell these’re models. Real guns feel… different. Maybe someday I’ll show you the real good stuff though - if you got the guts for it, of course. But for now, you get the beginner selection. Just sit tight, I’ll bring 'em out.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Ryuji then gives us 5,000 yen to buy a weapon for him. Now, here’s the thing. Buying anything here if you do not have the save bonus would be a permafuck.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Each gun is between 4,000 and 4,500 yen or so. If we did not have the save bonus, we’d have around 10,000 yen. We need a minimum of around 4,000 to avoid a permafuck situation… and realistically need more like 6,500 (there’s one purchase we’re going to make tomorrow that can be put off until after the palace).

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I wind up buying a new gun for everyone. I also like how in the UI, everyone else has their arcana listed and Ann is just… Ann. The new guns have roughly twice the stats of the starting ones. I’d normally be very hesitant to do this as this only works with the save bonus and would not be a genuine experience for someone who buys P5 Royal and plays it without the existing save file. This also is not a situation where you could simply find a P5 save file and import it: saves on the PS4 are encrypted because trophies.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By the way, never buy Morgana’s gun upgrades. You’ll notice that his gun has less attack than Ann’s (55) or Joker’s (70) and fewer rounds than either one. Basically, Morgana cannot into guns and this is why we’ll be replacing him ASAP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I also buy new armor for everyone that has double the defensive stats, because I have the money to do so. The melee weapons aren’t really worth it, and probably never will be now that guns have replenishing ammo. Again, normally I wouldn’t buy armor for Morgana but I did so because I need to keep him alive for this dungeon (and ONLY this dungeon).

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We also can’t sell guns once we’ve bought them.

Sojiro: “You talking about that psychotic whatever thing people’re going on about?”

obs64 2020-09-01 19-16-50-52

Sojiro: “Only an idiot would believe a preposterous story like that. Oh and sorry, but we’re closing soon.”

Sojiro: “Thanks for stopping in. Please come again.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I actually just read a thing in a Japanese newspaper (in English, not in Japanese) about how a lot of the bars, cafes, and traditional inns in Japan are closing down for good because of the COVID pandemic. Chances are that the bar Leblanc is modeled on probably doesn’t exist anymore.

Sojiro: “Sheesh, what a pain… oh… what do you want? If you’re bored, go wash some dishes or something.”

Sojiro: “Doesn’t concern you. It’s all good as long as the shop doesn’t fail. I’m not gonna go wearing a fake smile.”

Sojiro: “Who knows? Maybe I’ll end up living on the streets. As long as I’m here, the world leaves me be. No annoyances or troublesome people to deal with. It’s like my own personal hideaway.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh, right. The wiki claims that all of the major NPCs in this game are based on historical figures, but the one they have for Sojiro is incredibly weak. He’s basically supposed to be an older Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III… minus everything that made Jigen an interesting character.

Sojiro: “I’d be kinda screwed if I lost it, but I guess you would be too. So, you better at least try and be useful around here. Anyway, I’m leaving now. Don’t cause any trouble.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m going to skip a lot of this because it’s a tutorial about the crafting system. The crafting system is bunk and there’s no reason to ever use it because it costs money. Crafting boots Proficiency, but there’s other ways to get that which don’t cost money - this means that most of the crafting we’re going to do is going to be for stat gains and ONLY stat gains.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Lockpicks are used to open locked chests in dungeons. They’re almost never worth it - most of them contain healing items worth less than what you’d pay to make the lockpick in the first place.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Haha no we’re not you stupid cat. While that wouldn’t necessarily be a permafuck (we probably COULD clear it tomorrow and re-arrange the schedule to accommodate) we won’t be doing that.

Kamoshida: “Good morning.”

Kamoshida: “That admirable behavior won’t do you any good once you’re expelled.”

Kawakami: “Kurusu-kun. A word with you, please?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I hope you’re all ready for a cutscene added in Royal to remind us that Not-Elly exists. The game will keep doing this because it hates us.

Kawakami: “It won’t take long.”

Kamoshida: “Oh, you know this guy, Yoshizawa?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I might as well reveal Not-Elly’s real name at this point: Kasumi Yoshizawa.

Kasumi: “Yes, he lent me a helping hand earlier.”

Kamoshida: “I recommend you steer clear of the likes of him if you have any consideration for your future. Remember the discussion we just had? There are a number of students in this school you shouldn’t get involved with. This one’s at the top of the list.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yes, he’s grooming Kasumi now. I’d like to remind you that she’s like… I think 15.

Kasumi: "Oh, the delinquent transfer student?

Kawakami: “Sorry to interrupt, but I need to use the guidance office.”

Kamoshida: “Oh, pardon me. We should be going too - don’t want to get in the way of guiding this delinquent and all.”

Kasumi: “…Please, excuse us.”

Kawakami: “After you.”

Kawakami: “Well, there was that little exchange just now, but that’s not all… he gave me a brief lecture this morning, and your name came up. Something about the dangers of a lack of supervision…”

Kawakami: “I don’t mean to pry, but… just make sure you don’t go causing trouble, okay?”

Kawakami: “Oh, and one more thing. That girl outside the office - you didn’t make a pass at her, did you?”

Kawakami: “All right. Mr. Kamoshida has a real close eye on you… apparently, you’ve been getting involved with Sakamoto-kun. You seem well acquainted with Yoshizawa-san as well. Maybe you’re just naturally drawn to athletes?”

Kawakami: “Sorry, bad joke. That’s all I wanted to discuss. You’re free to go.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I skipped the part where Morgana whines at us to go to the palace. Today, we’re going to head to the library, buy some crap, and then see Tae again. And maybe learn some fun facts about salmon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: First off, the library. The library offers a small selection of books that we can check out one at a time: this means we need to both be on a school day and also a school day where we have control after school to change books. There’s one for each of the party member Personas, as well as Speed Reader. We REALLY, REALLY want to get Speed Reader ASAP because it halves the time you need to read a book… but we can’t now because our Knowledge isn’t high enough.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In addition, each book gives you a bonus for finishing it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next, we need to go to the secondhand store (right up the street from Leblanc) and buy a few things.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The first thing is the DVD Player, which is an absolute necessity. This is because on some nights, we’ll get time at night to do something but will not be able to leave Joker’s bedroom - the DVD Player is one thing we can do on those nights. We could put this off until after the first dungeon without it being a permafuck, and if you’re not using the P5 save bonus I strongly recommend you do so.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The second thing is a Silk Yarn and a Tin Clasp for making another lockpick. I actually only bought one of each, at a total of 3,200 yen. Not buying these is a permafuck, but you could also do it tomorrow. The reason is that we need these to boost proficiency early so we can do a different activity that we need for a confidant next month.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Our final stop today is the Clinic. There’s one more item we need to buy, but we don’t actually have any use for it until tomorrow. Ignore the “IM” icon, by the way. The game will complain at you every day that you don’t do a dungeon when one’s available.

Tae: “Huh?.. Now I remember. You’re the kid who was at Leblanc.”

Tae: “…Regular medicine won’t do the trick?”

Tae: “…Very well. Just head into the examination room for now.”

Tae: “It was obvious, actually. You call that hiding?”

Tae: “… Not that I care, of course. I was going to dispose of that medicine anyway. I got a little too carried away with it.”

Tae: “But tell me, why would a high schooler like yourself be so interested in that medicine? It’s very strange, indeed. You don’t seem to be very athletic, so… what exactly are you up to?”

Tae: “Studying…? Oh, for your entrance exams? So you’re looking to improve your concentration and reduce fatigue? Hm, that’s not the best idea.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: But… but… if we don’t ace the entrance exams, we can’t get into Toudai and Narusegawa will never love us! We’ll never fulfill our childhood promise! I remember absolutely nothing about that show.

Tae: “But if that’s what you want to do…”

Tae: “I have no obligation to help you with that. Why don’t you have an energy drink or something?”

Tae: “You’re really annoying, you know that? The medicine is really expensive. And it’s not something a high schooler can get his hands on. It costs almost as much as a car.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So… it’s cheaper than a good… probably 40% of prescription drugs?

Tae: “Got it? So how about you just go home?”

Tae: “What, like part-time help? …Do you consider yourself someone with a good amount of stamina?”

Tae: “But I haven’t been able to find one, even after putting an ad in the paper. …Are you up for it?”

Tae: “Do you want to do it or not?”

Tae: “Worried about the side effects, huh? Well, you can relax. Rest assured, my autopsy is guaranteed to find out exactly what part of it killed you.”

Tae: “What, aren’t you going to take it? The exit’s right there if you want to leave.”

Tae: “Well? Go on.”

Tae: “I can’t believe you actually drank it…”

Tae: “Wow… still doing okay, huh? Hm. Not bad, for a high schooler.”

Tae: “Do you remember anything from the moment you took the medicine until now? Hm… by the look in your eyes, I’d say you don’t.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In case you’re wondering, yes, Tae is easily the most popular P5 character among hentai artists.

Tae: “You briefly woke from your coma, but you were completely dazed during the entire examination. You eventually lost consciousness and fell back asleep.”

Tae: “Are you out of your mind? Only an idiot would have drank that.”

Tae: “Fine. By the way, the reason you lost consciousness was because of the taste.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Remember how I said to keep in mind that Tae is basically selling a “legendary” medicine? I’m pretty sure this is a mis-translation, because this entire scene is meant to be a reference to Maya’s legendary weapon in Innocent Sin (and Eikichi’s, but to a lesser extent).

image

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Functionally, surstromming is the same thing as kusaya - it’s just that surstromming is always herring whereas kusaya can be a bunch of different types of fish… but not salmon. There’s your fact about salmon. In Innocent Sin, Maya got her legendary gun from the French restaurant, which required her to eat a plate of spaghetti topped with kusaya because food in Sumaru City works a lot like Silent Hill.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meanwhile, Eikichi and Lisa are on the phone with Jun asking which one of them allowed kusaya to exist in the new world. None of them will admit to it, and then Tamaki calls to let them know that it was in fact Satomi Tadashi’s fault.

Tae: "Oh well. All that matters is that thanks to you, I was able to get some good data.

Tae: “Okay, it’s my turn to make good on my part of the deal. That’s why I waited until you woke up. I don’t want the general public to know about my original medicines. So, you’re strictly prohibited from disclosing what happens here to anyone… understood?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Uh, I think it’s a bit late for that, given that Joker came here because he’d heard about the rumors.

Tae: “Then it’s a deal. As long as you come here for it, I’ll give you the medicine at a good price whenever you want. I may even add additional selections, in time. …I look forward to your continued patronage.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: To be honest, Tae is one of the most useless confidants in the game. We’ll only wind up maxing her out near the very end.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Sae’s going at this like one of those phone hotline psychics. “Your blender must’ve broken down at some point… someone had to provide you with homemade smoothies… who was it!?” She’s acting like Joker is Golgo 13 or something.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Right now, Tae’s confidant is garbage in terms of the perks it provides. This will be true until roughly Rank 7, when she provides THE BEST ACCESSORIES IN THE GAME.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Even if we had a better reason to come back, we can’t - Tae’s confidant is gated by your Guts stat and we’d need a minimum of Rank 2 to progress it any further.

Tae: “Oh, you don’t remember that part, either? Well, I was saying that teenage test subjects are quite valuable in the medical research industry. So I’ll provide you with the medicine for your entrance exams, and in exchange you’ll be my guinea pig.”

Tae: “If you’re able to move now, you can go home. All right, take care.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: One positive to Tae’s confidant is that progressing it also gives you 2 points in Guts every time you do so.

Tae: “And I’ll put together some compensation by then, for all your efforts today. But you’re not getting that in writing.”

Tae: “Based on today’s results, I think I can whip up some new medicine for next time. Drop by when you’re ready for it.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I got a little worried here because you’ll see a music note appear after you make this choice, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t matter what you pick… not that I’d happen to know that because I had to record this entire thing twice or anything.

Tae: “You live close by, right? Try not to collapse on your way home, okay? I’m not really in the mood to write up an autopsy. So take care of yourself.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: John Persona, cause of death: femdom.

Sojiro: “You make just one mistake and your life’s over. Instead of hanging around, you should be studying or something. If there aren’t any customers, you can use the shop.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Basically, Leblanc can be used to train any of our social stats now. Previously, I think you could do all of them but Kindness… but I might be wrong on that. It’s been a while.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Down on the table here is a new feature in Royal - crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles are a free stat raiser for Knowledge that does not consume time. They show up every so often, and repeat if you missed one - but we don’t want to miss one as until we have our social stats maxed out, missing one would be a permafuck. Besides which, I think there’s a trophy for doing all of them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The puzzle gives us a couple of down boxes that we can’t fill in as a hint for what the highlighted word is. Can you guess what it is?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Morgana, you’re a fucking idiot and I’m dumping your dumb feline ass the second we get a new party member.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And there we go, a free 2 points in Knowledge. Generally, Royal expands a lot on what you can do at night because of how tight the schedule is.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: When we get to Joker’s room, Morgana has us clean it up. I’m not entirely sure where Joker would put all this stuff, since as far as I know Leblanc is basically just the kitchen, the dining area, and this room upstairs.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If Morgana is anything like my cat, he’s going to eat the plant, then throw up a lot, and then repeat in a cycle forever because he never learns anything. We’ll need to spend money on this plant tomorrow.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If I remember right, we never actually wind up reading either of these books. There was a trophy in the base game for reading all the books, but the way it worked was that at the end of the year, you made a save about… three weeks before the last day and just plowed through all the books you had no reason to read when building social stats.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We also get the CRT TV for free. This is a major change, because if I remember right you had to buy the TV from the secondhand store separate from the DVD player. In fact, many 100% guides for the base game never buy the DVD player at all because of how tight money was in that game.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s another glorified tutorial where two students tell each other about the library. We know about this already.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Honestly, most books are shit. The last good one I read was whatever that last Cory Doctorow collection was, the one with Unauthorized Bread in it. That was good until it went too far up its own ass. The Arsene Lupin collection I have wasn’t bad either, but it’s a pain in the ass to read because of how fucking French it is.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Holy fuck this guy. This guy looks like a rejected SMT villain. I forgot about him.

Hiruta: “You must all be shocked by what happened with Suzui-san. It was a shock to me too…”

Hiruta: “Although I can relate to how she felt. Her eyes were devoid of life as they looked upon this sad, hopeless world.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And they said Nyarlathotep wasn’t in any of the games after Eternal Punishment.

Hiruta: “Well, I suppose everyone views the world differently. Let’s have a test. You there…! Take a look at this.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s kind of dumb that this would be a question since it’s meant to fool you, but…

Hiruta: “Heh, that’s correct. It seems your eyes see the truth.”

Hiruta: “Isn’t it strange that they view the same image differently? Humans don’t see the world as it is. We simply process visual information with our brain.”

Hiruta: “How you see the world is nothing more than a trick of the mind… it is all mere cognition. There is no proof that the world each of us sees is the same.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So what you’re saying is that… they’ll never see or hear the things you do, and as far as you’re concerned they all can go to hell? On a side note, Rick James’s backup singers fucking rule.

Morgana: “How you see the world depends on your brain’s cognition, huh… optical illusions and the Metaverse might be more similar than you’d think.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is another thing that can happen - your confidants will text you and ask you to spend time with them. If I remember right, you got a small bonus for accepting invites via IM in the base game… but they must’ve done away with that in Royal. We’re going to accept this, except first we have some shopping to do.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m… reasonably certain this is supposed to be a location that’s in Shin Megami Tensei 1, which also had an underground shopping area in Shibuya. It was where they introduced dark rooms, which were oh so fun to navigate when accessing the automap took three button presses and using the minimap cost SP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By FAR the most important shop here is the flower shop. Bio Nutrients can be used on the plant in Joker’s room every 16 days for 3 free points in Kindness (up from 2 in the base game). Later on, there’s a better and more expensive variant that gives 4 points instead (3 in the base game). In the base game, you had to buy a fuckload of those. This is important because it does not take time to apply them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We can then use Ryuji’s IM to warp directly to him from the Underground Mall.

Ryuji: “This is my secret trainin’ spot. Er… was. Back when I was on the track team.”

Ryuji: “Actually, I’ve been thinkin’ about tryin’ to run again. Fightin’ in that other world was a total shock. I couldn’t move like I used to. It just felt… lame.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Speaking of that, I just bought a copy of the PC re-release of Ni no Kuni 1. I wish I had played it before I did NNK2 because NNK2 is basically a cheap asset flip of NNK1. NNK1 has actual anime cutscenes. Made by Ghibli, not by Fred the Janitor. I really, really wish they’d given it to Atlus. Maybe get the team who did Radiant Historia behind it.

Ryuji: “So I started thinkin’, maybe I need to build up my muscles again. Anything’s gotta be better than this flimsy body, right?”

Ryuji: “Plus, maybe then I’ll be able to help out a little more.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is where we have to pay attention. All (or almost all) answers during confidant rank-up scenes give different points and there’s always an objectively correct response. Failing even a single one of these is most likely a permafuck.

Ryuji: "U-uh… I mean that in a good way!’

Ryuji: “Anyways, you act like it’s only me who’s gonna be doin’ this, you’re gettin’ in on it too.”

Ryuji: “Whoa, don’t look so surprised! Why’d you think I had you go and change into that? It’d be pointless if I was the only one gettin’ super fast, right?”

Ryuji: “Damn, my legs’re all tight…”

Ryuji: “Before Kamoshida came along, the track team was the biggest thing this school had goin’ for it. But it all changed after he got our coach fired and took over as the sub.”

Ryuji: “That bastard… right from the very start he was tryin’ to get rid of us. He’d give us crazy workouts, then when we couldn’t do 'em, he’d add even more on top of that.”

Ryuji: “Day after day was nothing but that bullshit… he was goin’ after me especially. He knew… he knew I was the kinda guy who’d fight back.”

Ryuji: “If my time dropped even a little, he’d cuss me out. Then on top of that, he brought up my parents…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I feel like Jihei and Reiji probably had a conversation like this about Kandori and Kandori’s father, and Reiji gets all worked up and goes “and then… and then…” and Jihei responds with “And then you shot him. I know. I was there.” This option doesn’t matter, by the way.

Ryuji: “Truth is, my mom’s the only one I got. All my dad did when he was still around was drink. Sometimes he’d even beat me, or my mom.”

Ryuji: “I dunno how that bastard Kamoshida found out, but he told the whole goddamn team… and as you can guess, I lost it and hit him.”

Ryuji: “It was like he wanted me to do it though. He called it an act of violence and shut the team down… thanks to that, the other guys on the team treat me like some kinda traitor.”

Ryuji: “And they ain’t wrong. 'Cause of me, they all lost their shot at the championship.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’ll probably stop posting the music notes, but just know that most dialog choices in these scenes I’m picking for a reason.

Ryuji: “How could I after that? C’mon, don’t ask me tough questions like that. I’m not very smart, y’know?”

Ryuji: “Anyways, it doesn’t matter now. That’s all in the past. I’m only thinkin’ about the future now! That’s what we’re gonna do - build the future!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What are you, Maya?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Each party member has a skill like this for their second rank - it lets you re-try a failed negotiation. They used to work for all enemy personality types… at least, I think they did. It’s possible they only worked on one and it was just translated wrong.

Ryuji: “C’mon, we’re all warmed up, right? How 'bout another run?”

Ryuji: “By the way, you’re pretty good at runnin’. Not as good as me, though!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is a new feature for Royal. A lot of the confidant events were re-written slightly to allow for an extra phone call afterward, which of course gets you extra points. This is due to the changes that Atlus made to confidants in Royal - namely that there’s more of them and it’d be otherwise impossible to 100% all confidants even on a second playthrough.

Ryuji: “This would’ve never happened back then. Ugh… I should’ve kept up my running.”

Ryuji: “We’re only gettin’ started! Let’s keep on runnin’ towards tomorrow! I’m pretty rusty, but even if it got kinda rough, I had fun.”

Ryuji: “And with you here, I get some friendly competition too. Plus we get to talk. So yeah, I’ll catch you later! See ya!”

Sojiro: “I’ll know what’s what as soon as I see your grades. Wanna prove you’re turnin’ over a new leaf? Make studying your second biggest habit, after breathing.”

Sojiro: “The TV’s on, though.”

Morgana: “…I have a good idea. Bring me that chair, the one in the corner.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Another glorified tutorial. We can use the chair to do pull-ups to build guts. Certainly not for autoerotic asphyxiation, no sir. We’re not doing that, though. In fact, the gains on using the chair are so shit that we’ll NEVER be doing it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The first thing we want to do, before anything else, is use those Bio Nutrients for 3 points in kindness.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We then want to craft. Crafting is largely the same as it was in the base game: you can craft more items the higher your proficiency is. The major difference is that in the base game, the number of proficiency points you got from crafting was randomized - the more you had, the more likely you were to get a good result. This meant that there were a lot of nights where you’d have to save right before crafting and reload until you got the highest result.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In Royal, crafting always gets you 3 points. No more, no less. It doesn’t matter how many items you craft, what you’re crafting, or how high your proficiency is.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next time, we’ll go into Kamoshida’s Palace with the training wheels off, and grind for a metric fuckload of money. I’m serious - we’ll need a MINIMUM of 28,400 yen between 4/20 and the next dungeon and will have zero opportunities to grind between then. This is in addition to money for gear and any of Tae’s accessories if she starts selling them early enough. Welcome to 100% confidants, which is somehow grindier than Snow Queen ever was.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: New music in this update:

Music Layer Cake

Music Butterfly Kisses

1 Like

It’s not like I’m doubting you but I’m just gonna check the records to see if there was maybe the same person commission art of Doctor Femdom Bad Medicine.

At least I could easily see John Persona walking into a shady clinic, staring at the doctor one second longer than it takes to become awkward, and saying “My name is John Persona. I need a painkiller powerful enough to make a rhino high.”

Click Here for Update 8

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s 4/20, and instead of smoking weed we’re going to head to Kamoshida’s Palace.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We start out the day by reading Pirate Legend on the train. The reason we’re doing this is because we are in desperate need of guts and finishing the book gets us 5 points in that.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Unfortunately, Pirate Legend takes two sessions to finish.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We’ll be getting Joker a job just a few days from now.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s something we would’ve done in the base game that we’re not doing here, and that’s emptying all the vending machines in Tokyo of their precious SP-regenerating drinks. The changes to guns make most fights free EXP with no chance of taking damage.

Ann: “We basically just have to go to that castle and steal the Treasure from Kamoshida, right?”

Ryuji: “But wait, what even is a Treasure? I wanna know that before we do anything.”

Morgana: “A Treasure is the physical form of the Palace ruler’s desires. In other words, it’s the core of the Palace. Once we steal it, the Palace will crumble… I think.”

Morgana: “Having said that, even I don’t know what Kamoshida’s Treasure is going to be.”

Ann: “And where can we find it?”

Morgana: “There’s no way of knowing that until we go in and find out. But if I had to guess, I’d say he has it locked up somewhere in the depths of the Palace.”

Panther: “Hm? What’s up?”

Skull: “N-nothing. I-I was just thinkin’ we should choose a codename for you too.”

Panther: “A code name?”

Skull: “I’m Skull, he’s Joker, and that’s Mona.”

Morgana: “Judging by your costume…”

Skull: “I mean, she’s got that tail and stuff, so… whadda you think, Akira?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Well, she looks like she’s going to rob a bank… and the Japanese word for bank is “Ginko”, so let’s call her Ginko. It just fits.

Panther: “Wait! Is that what you’re going to call me from now on!? I am SO not down with this!”

Skull: “What do you wanna be called, then?”

Panther: “Um, something better than just a little cat… maybe… ‘Panther’? That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Too late, she’s Ginko now.

Skull: “Huh? Why?”

Panther: " 'Cause it sounds more… ferocious?"

Panther: “More importantly: Kamoshida!”

Skull: “Oh, right. Let’s go!”

SaturnJoker: This is another tutorial, which I’ll skip apart from some of the details.

SaturnJoker: We should all know how fusion works since… oh wait, Persona 1 and 2 didn’t have fusion as a mechanic. Anyway, you glue two Personas together and get a new one. Here, we’re forced to fuse Arsene with the Pixie we got earlier… which is fine because we need Agathion for confidant boosts.

SaturnJoker: Unlike Persona 4, we can pick any skill we’d like to transfer over. In this case, I pick Eiha because right now we have no other source of Curse damage.

SaturnJoker: By the way, fusions in this game are done by executing the two Personas on a guillotine. Anyway…

New Persona: Agathion

Origin: Abrahamic Mythology

First Appearance: Devil Summoner (Saturn)

Familiar spirit in Abrahamic mythology, often associated with pots or jars.

image

SaturnJoker: For doing the tutorial, we get a rank up in the Fool confidant, which gives us Batman Vision. We’ll see what that does in a bit.

Skull: “Why’re you spacin’ out like that? It’s kinda hard to tell what you’re thinkin’ sometimes.”

Morgana: “Let’s just say he’s a man of high caliber. We’re counting on you, Joker!”

Skull: “So, where do we start?”

Panther: “Safe room…?”

Skull: “It’ll make sense when you see it. Welp, let’s head out!”

SaturnJoker: I know what you’re thinking. “There’s no way they’d explain the safe room thing a third time… would they?” The answer is yes.

SaturnJoker: Anyway, there’s more tutorials about how we can fast travel between safe rooms (but only certain ones) and that if you’re online you can “request assistance” and get a small HP/SP heal like in Persona 4 Golden.

SaturnJoker: The door to the main hall is locked, so we have to go around.

SaturnJoker: This is Batman Vision. It outlines enemies with a color based on their level relative to yours, and also shows you the security level of the palace. It’ll also highlight chests and one other thing we’ll see shortly.

SaturnJoker: I got in a battle with some Bicorns to test the new guns. Joker goes from doing ~77 on his last shot to doing around 128. It’s a pretty big difference.

SaturnJoker: Oh right, Ann’s SMG. Unlike everyone else, Ann can’t control what she fires at, possibly because she’s holding an MP5 with one hand and also sideways. She splits her attacks evenly between all enemies, and builds damage slower than Joker or Morgana does. Usually, you want her to go last after there’s only one enemy on the board so all of her attacks hit that one enemy.

SaturnJoker: There’s a lot of Pixies in this area and we need money anyway, so I decided to show off each of our party’s finisher screens.

SaturnJoker: This is the only time we will hopefully ever be seeing Morgana’s finisher screen.

SaturnJoker: Past the safe room that we ended up in last time, we find the kitchen.

SaturnJoker: Morgana gives us a couple of items. Smokescreens let you escape a battle instantly. Molotov Cocktail and Freeze Spray do a weak fire/ice attack, respectively. Vanish Balls… I honestly forget, they’re useless.

SaturnJoker: In this room, we learn another use for Batman Vision, which is that it highlights environmental objects we can break to get items: usually either crafting materials or vendor trash (we want the latter) since most of the enemies here don’t drop a lot of money and we need a lot of money.

SaturnJoker: Through the kitchen is a hallway with another tutorial fight that unlocks a new battle mechanic.

SaturnJoker: This fight introduces the Baton Pass. The way this works is that if one of your party members gets an extra press turn (fuck it I’m calling them extra press turns and you can’t stop me) from hitting a weakness, they can pass their extra turn to someone else. This gives the other party member a boost to attack and to healing.

SaturnJoker: If the second party member also hits a weakness, you can continue baton passing. You can’t pass to someone who has already passed on that turn.

SaturnJoker: I’m not sure what the exact numbers are, but they’re pretty huge. Ann’s doing double damage and then some with a simple Agi.

SaturnJoker: Ryuji then wipes out the Bicorn in a single hit. Note that his damage is lower because his magic stat sucks. He’ll be the next one out after we get rid of Morgana. By the way, if you manage to Baton Pass to all 4 party members, the last person to go can cast a spell or physical skill for no cost.

SaturnJoker: Most of the party’s finisher screens suck. There’s exactly one I like and it’s on a character who is incredibly unlikely to get one. I wish someone had done these for the P1 and P2 cast because I can just imagine them.

SaturnJoker: Jihei’s would be him firing his SMG wildly with the words “DEVIL BUSTED” in the background. Tatsuya’s would start out as him riding his motorcycle with the frame in the back broken like he drove the bike through it, but would change after Taurus Temple to him hugging Jun.

SaturnJoker: Anyway, the enemies around here barely drop anything in terms of money - 375 yen is on the high side. We can sell the crafting mats though, and I’m definitely doing that unless they’re for lockpicks.

SaturnJoker: I use a tiny bit of Ann’s SP to capture a Mandrake. We have a side objective here, you see: by the time we’re done, we need four specific Personas. Those Personas are Agathion (Chariot), Pixie (Lovers), Mandrake (Death) and Berith (Hierophant). I grabbed another Pixie off-screen, so we’re now at three out of four. Berith is going to be a pain in the ass to get for several reasons, namely that he’s level 9 and we’re barely at 7 even after I grinded a bit.

New Persona: Mandrake

Origin: Europe

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II

Mythical plant that grows on the graves of those who died with guilt. Emits a shriek on being uprooted that kills anyone who hears it. This is Mandrake’s first appearance in a Persona game, having previously been contained to the mainline SMT series and Giten Megami Tensei.

image

SaturnJoker: Mandrake sucks and the only reason we have it is to boost Tae’s confidant points.

SaturnJoker: Right after this, I run into another group of three Pixies, so I get Ann’s finisher.

SaturnJoker: This finisher screen is physically painful to look at.

SaturnJoker: In the next hallway, we get the ability to stealth like we did in the casino at the start of the game. This removes all challenge from getting ambushes - as long as you are in stealth, the enemies can be right on top of you and not see you.

SaturnJoker: On occasion, your party members will chime in to comment on fights. In this case, we get it because I made it through the fight without taking damage (since I’m just gunning everything down before it can move).

Skull: “But the bars’re blockin’ our way in…”

Morgana: “If he’s protecting it this securely, it has to be important. That means there should be a way in and out of there.”

Morgana: “Joker, do you think you can solve the mystery of this room?”

SaturnJoker: Our Batman Vision shows us that there’s blue footprints on the floor. I’m like, 80% sure this didn’t exist in the base game.

SaturnJoker: I didn’t capture it, but you see those goat heads? One of those is a switch.

Morgana: “You’re hopeless… don’t you realize how vital a map is?”

SaturnJoker: I wish this had existed in Persona 1.

Morgana: “It’s a true necessity for a phantom thief. This should make securing a route much easier.”

Panther: “Wait, does it say where the Treasure is on there?”

Morgana: “Oh… actually, it seems like this map is incomplete. There might be more of them around.”

SaturnJoker: Unfortunately, the top part of the main hall is barred off.

SaturnJoker: We have to use our Batman powers to get onto the… uh… what the fuck is this, anyway? It’s like a rafter only it’s not supporting anything.

SaturnJoker: We can then jump onto these giant chandeliers capable of holding the weight of three teenagers and a cat. This is such a novice-level villain lair mistake.

SaturnJoker: You might ask why we can’t just drop down to the first floor, and that’s because that’s the boss arena.

SaturnJoker: The door on the other side takes us to a room with a locked chest. These are what we need lockpicks for.

SaturnJoker: The Nightwatch Armor is a pretty significant boost over the armor I bought for Joker.

SaturnJoker: They then bring up the safe room thing a third time, just in case we somehow didn’t get it the first two times.

SaturnJoker: Morgana then gives us a present I wish I had in the original game. New to Royal are items like the Stamina Kit, which can be used in a safe room to restore the entire party’s SP or HP.

SaturnJoker: Past the second safe room is another tutorial hallway, this time teaching us how to use Batman Vision on enemies.

SaturnJoker: This is actually kind of useless, because most of the shadows above our level are marked in a different way.

SaturnJoker: Down the hall is a new enemy added for Royal - Cait Sith. Cait Sith isn’t strong against or weak to guns, and as long as we get an ambush will reliably go down in a single round of gunfire.

SaturnJoker: In the same hallway is Silky, which we actually need in order to get the Hierophant Persona. I didn’t realize this at first, so let’s just pretend I did.

SaturnJoker: Silky is weak to lightning, and so we have to spend a little bit of SP. This is fine, because at this point I wasn’t aware of just how different Kamoshida’s palace is in Royal.

New Persona: Silky

Origin: Scotland

First Appearance: Ronde (Saturn)

Silk-wearing fairy maid who terrorizes lazy servants.

image

SaturnJoker: At the end of that hallway is a storage room, and the only door leading out is locked.

SaturnJoker: This is fine, because we can just go through the vents.

SaturnJoker: This is yet another tutorial about a mechanic that doesn’t come up all that often. On occasion, if you get an enemy’s HP low enough without killing them, they’ll surrender to you and immediately end the battle with no negotiation necessary. Each personality type has a certain chance of it happening. But hey, free Pyro Jack.

SaturnJoker: I think we all know who he is by now so I’m not going to log him.

SaturnJoker: We also get a tutorial on how to negotiate. Generally, Irritable and Gloomy are the hardest ones to deal with.

SaturnJoker: We also get a Breeze Ring, a special kind of accessory that gives the wearer a skill. In this case, it’s Garu. We won’t be using it because there’s an accessory you more or less need to have on at all times that we’ll probably start getting before the second dungeon.

SaturnJoker: Once we leave through the room with the Breeze Ring (we can unlock that door on the other side while we’re at it) we wind up in… how the hell is it that every single medieval castle has collapsed spiral staircases?

Morgana: “That’s just a little something I’ve been working on in secret. The grappling hook lets you zip to hard-to-reach locations in a flash.”

SaturnJoker: The hook is a new addition to Royal. The game makes it really, really obvious when you can use it, with a distinct sound and also Joker’s hand lightning on fire. This will tie in with something else we’ll see later.

SaturnJoker: Past the hook spot, we run into our first instance of unidentified gear. These are items that have to be washed at the coin laundromat (it’s near Leblanc in Yongen-Jaya) and can turn into a number of different armor items.

SaturnJoker: In the base game, these were godawful: not only were you not getting a usable gear drop, but they only sell for 10 yen if not cleaned. Thankfully, Royal fixes that by adding in a secondhand clothes shop that buys them at the full value of whatever they’d turn into if you cleaned them.

SaturnJoker: This is where we get introduced to the red aura shadows. These are tougher enemies that drop a lot of money. Remember how I said we had three out of the four Personas we need? These red aura shadows are the last one.

SaturnJoker: Rather than continue on, I found a safe room (there’s one in this area) and then went back to grind some more. The red aura shadows are level 9, and at this point Joker is level 7. Unfortunately, the enemies at the start of the dungeon give so little EXP that it would take forever to grind to 9.

SaturnJoker: Here’s the maps of everywhere we’ve been so far. We can’t actually go back to the prison, even though it’s on the fast travel list.

SaturnJoker: While grinding, I ran into an Incubus that surrendered to me. I grabbed him for compendium purposes, but didn’t bother keeping him because our Persona roster is full.

SaturnJoker: The area by the third safe room has a barred door because this is Resident Evil now.

Morgana: “Wait, there’s a round indentation underneath… it looks like it won’t move until we fill that.”

Panther: “So we need a key… I wonder where it could be.”

SaturnJoker: I forgot to capture it, but all of the rooms on this floor are full of books. This one is the Queen Book.

SaturnJoker: The one closest to the save point has the Slave Book…

SaturnJoker: And the third room has the Beefcake Book, which sounds like what would happen if you tried to novelize Ram Ranch.

SaturnJoker: The room where we need to use these books is down past this red shadow. We don’t want to fight him yet, so I stealthed in.

Morgana: “A library, huh? This definitely seems fishy.”

SaturnJoker: It seems fishy because Kamoshida is probably illiterate.

Ryuji: “Whaddya mean?”

Morgana: “Come on, it’s a library in a castle. There has to be some kind of secret mechanism in here.”

SaturnJoker: We then get the King Book, which forms the full title of the theme for Kamoshida’s palace, which is called “King, Queen, and Slave”.

SaturnJoker: There’s also three glowing slots in the bookshelf, because this isn’t enough of a Resident Evil puzzle.

Morgana: “Hm… wait a second. The books on this shelf seem familiar.”

Skull: “These’re the names of the volleyball team members! Wait, what the hell? All of the titles are boys from our school!”

Morgana: “Ryuji Sakamoto: The Vulgar Ape. There’s one here for Skull.”

SaturnJoker: Great job on the whole codename thing, Morgana.

Skull: “That bastard! Who the hell does he think he is!?”

Panther: “Wait, didn’t we find a book earlier? What if we…”

SaturnJoker: “Wait a minute… that card…”

SaturnJoker: We can insert any of the books here, but unless we want to make like this one video of Bioshock Infinite I can’t find and play music on the bells, we’ve got to do them by theme. Bioshock Infinite was a mistake.

Skull: “Tracing Kamoshida’s Steps… Kamoshida’s Heroisms… Kamoshida’s Law!? What the hell!? All these books’re about Kamoshida!”

SaturnJoker: I have to admit, inserting themed books would be my last idea. I’d probably go home, burn like a thousand copies of Shrek 2 and replace all the books with them just to see what happens.

Panther: “Huh? This book… has Shiho’s name in the title… wait, it’s not just this one! All of the books here are about female students!”

Skull: “Ann Takamaki: The Charming Doll. Holy shit.”

SaturnJoker: So, a couple of things about this room. First, this room was changed a LOT in development - people have datamined the original game and found that originally the pictures were a lot more explicit. They also found that the safe rooms were originally supposed to have a harem of faceless female volleyball players in them, and I believe there were supposed to be a few of them in here as well.

Skull: “Wait… it’s all pics of her?”

SaturnJoker: This is also a direct reference to Persona 4 and the first room that Yosuke and the protagonist find in the TV world.

Panther: “…”

Panther: “Yeah… thanks. If anything, I feel even more motivated to do this now.”

Morgana: “I’m sure it’ll feel awful, but we should search this room. There has to be something in here if he was hiding it with such an elaborate trick.”

SaturnJoker: It’s kind of hard to miss this because it plays a sound. I wish my car keys did that. Actually wait… nah. That’d get annoying.

Panther: “Is this… a medal?”

Morgana: “That size, and that shape… I think that’s our key! Remember that round indentation we saw back near those bars?”

Panther: “Wait, there’s something under the medal too.”

Skull: “So is it gonna tell us where the Treasure is?”

Panther: “That’s a weird-shaped building… could it be a tower or something?”

SaturnJoker: I’m not gonna lie, this freaked me out when I played this the first time. I was like “how the fuck am I supposed to get to the boss like this, I’m already down so much SP”.

Skull: “All right! Let’s head over there!”

Morgana: “No. Now that we know how much we have left, we can calculate the best way to pace ourselves. Let’s keep exploring, but take breaks when you need to, Joker.”

SaturnJoker: Here’s another new thing for Royal. In the base game, there’s no fight in this room.

SaturnJoker: Two Bicorns, or as I call them, a Quadricorn. Big deal, we’ll just gun them down.

SaturnJoker: This is a “Disaster Shadow”, a new addition to Royal. Disaster Shadows don’t do anything until attacked, at which point they immediately retaliate.

SaturnJoker: Morgana then kills it for us, and it drops a Snuff Soul, which restores 50 SP. Disaster Shadows always drop items when killed.

SaturnJoker: When they die (or after a period of time from being attacked) Disaster Shadows explode for an amount equal to the damage we did to them before they exploded. In this case, it’s enough to bring the Bicorns to 1 HP because this is a tutorial fight.

SaturnJoker: The game then throws another one at us, which explodes and drops a Bead. It’s a free full heal, I’ll take it.

SaturnJoker: Right in the middle of the hallway is a bookshelf with bodybuilding books on it.

Skull: “Huh! There IS somethin’ in here! …There we go.”

SaturnJoker: It’s just a healing item, but any healing item I don’t have to spend money on is a good healing item at this point.

SaturnJoker: In the earlier shots with the map, you might’ve noticed a chest in the hallway with the red aura shadow. It’s a new weapon for Ryuji, which I grabbed without fighting the shadow. Don’t worry, we fight one soon enough.

SaturnJoker: We can now open up the barred door and make progress.

SaturnJoker: There’s a hallway with a save room at the bottom, which is kind of ridiculous when you remember there’s one right behind us.

SaturnJoker: Past that is this room, which looks like a trap but isn’t.

Morgana: “This place is huge… yet there are no guards? That seems suspicious…”

Skull: “But the Treasure’s up ahead, right? We don’t got a choice but to keep goin’.”

Morgana: “I guess that’s true… but we need to make sure we’re ready for whatever might be ahead. What do you think, Joker? Should we continue onward?”

Panther: “I can’t believe he can think like that… especially after what he did to Shiho…”

Skull: “God, that bastard makes me so freakin’ sick! Just you wait, Kamoshida!”

SaturnJoker: And now we’ve got a bossfight against Archangel. He starts by Charging, which… I think doubles the damage on his next attack. There’s a tutorial on guarding here, which actually does something (unlike in Persona 1 and 2) in that it reduces incoming damage and also stop you from being knocked down.

SaturnJoker: Archangel almost kills Morgana in one hit, but I win the battle with guns and physical attacks. I could spend SP, but… meh.

SaturnJoker: This gets us to Level 8 on everyone but Ryuji for some reason. I’m not sure why that is.

Panther: “What should we do? Head back?”

Morgana: “No, the Treasure is definitely up ahead, and there has to be a path to it somewhere. See anything that could help us zip by here? Keep your eyes sharp!”

SaturnJoker: Well, Ann and Ryuji are screwed, but…

SaturnJoker: Rather than go through to the next area, I opt to go back down into the church. My hope was that I’d get enough EXP to hit 9 and then go after the red aura shadows, and also there’s some stuff in the church.

SaturnJoker: The problem is that we have to drop down off one of these conveniently-placed stacks of boxes, and the chances of an enemy seeing us are pretty high.

SaturnJoker: I get ambushed, and Morgana dies pretty quickly even though this is a fight we could solve with guns alone.

SaturnJoker: The other LP shows this, but if Morgana goes down, he’ll hide and keep announcing combat.

SaturnJoker: One of the Pixies puts Joker to sleep. Sleep is the best status effect in this game: while sleeping, you recover some HP and SP each turn. In fact, you could theoretically get into a fight with just Pixies and constantly guard until they put you to sleep to recover SP, since Pixies barely do damage.

SaturnJoker: The chest just had a Soul Drop in it, and I didn’t get enough EXP to hit 9. I’m glad I didn’t though, and I’ll show you why in a minute.

SaturnJoker: Before that though, we’ve got one last tutorial on a new feature added in Royal.

Morgana: “Yeah. By the looks of it, no one’s been in there for a long time.”

Panther: “I wonder what’s over there… should we take a closer look?”

SaturnJoker: This is what’s called a Will Seed. There are three in every dungeon, and if you collect them all you can turn them in for gear. They’re always hidden behind a grapple point. I’m skipping around a lot of the dialog.

Morgana: “As far as I can tell, there are two of them left.”

Skull: “Huh? How can you tell? You smell ‘em or somethin’?”

Panther: “Yeah, like how dogs can - oh, but you’re a cat.”

SaturnJoker: One thing this tutorial doesn’t show is that getting a will seed restores SP to the entire party.

SaturnJoker: We also run into a new enemy: the Kelpie. I grabbed one at some point and got rid of it immediately.

SaturnJoker: After looting the main building, the only thing left to do is go into the tower.

SaturnJoker: The tower has a red aura at the bottom, but I don’t bother taking it out because my plan was to level up and then come back here and negotiate with this one.

SaturnJoker: This area existed in the base game, but was changed HEAVILY for Royal. It used to be a flat box maze with four red aura shadows in it, and is now entirely skippable.

Morgana: “Oh! That matches up with the map. There’s no doubt that’s the tower we’re headed for.”

Skull: “Hell yeah, we did it! So… where’s the entrance?”

Morgana: “It’s no surprise that security would be tight around here. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Let’s go, Joker!”

SaturnJoker: In the base game, you’d have to sneak around and probably fight one or more of the shadows. Royal lets you skip the entire thing by using the grappling hook.

SaturnJoker: There’s loot down there, and at the time I was thinking “I’ll just sneak and grab it later.”

SaturnJoker: And then I accidentally press X and ambush it. Meet our fourth required Persona, Berith. All those red aura shadows? They’re all Berith. Berith is immune to guns. The only saving grace? The red aura shadows in the base game were TWO Beriths.

SaturnJoker: Then, I roll amazing luck. Morgana gets a critical hit with his physical attack, which knocks Berith down just as if we’d used his weakness. This is why I went out of my way to pick up Silky earlier: Silky has Bufu and Berith’s only weakness is Ice. Unfortunately, we’re only level 8 and cannot negotiate.

SaturnJoker: Remember how I said that I was glad I didn’t hit 9 earlier? This is why. Each one of the Beriths in this area drop a guaranteed Sooty Heavy Armor, which we can sell for a few thousand yen. This also goes for the Berith we passed in the tower and the one guarding the chest that had Ryuji’s weapon in it.

SaturnJoker: I go through a bit of SP killing the rest of the Beriths in this area, and hit level 9. By this point, we’ve got around 41,000 yen - and this isn’t taking into account all the stuff we’re going to sell.

SaturnJoker: After this, I immediately rushed back into the tower… only to find out that Berith is a tougher negotiation target than you’d think. Unlike most demons, Berith will not negotiate with you unless he’s at a certain HP threshold: I think it’s below half. I wind up killing him and get another 500 yen and a Sooty Heavy Armor, and do the same with the one in the library area.

SaturnJoker: I burned our other lockpick on this chest to get a new whip for Ann.

SaturnJoker: Finally, I go back to the one in the library that respawns (the others don’t) and get a lucky crit from Ann. I chain this into an All-Out, and then Bufu with Joker to knock him down again.

SaturnJoker: And now we’ve avoided the permafucks. We’ve also gotten all but around four Personas in this dungeon.

New Persona: Berith

Origin: Ars Goetia

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Duke of hell, known for wearing a gold crown, scarlet armor, and riding a red horse. Will tell you the future if you complain at him enough.

SaturnJoker: Now that we’ve got Berith, we’re good to finish the dungeon.

SaturnJoker: Note the vent on the left. I didn’t capture it, but as soon as we enter this room, Morgana will mention that there’s a will seed nearby.

SaturnJoker: The vent leads outside, to a chest with some trash attack items I’ll probably sell.

SaturnJoker: Just above that is a grapple point, which you can see from outside if you turn Batman Vision on.

SaturnJoker: We go up the tower, stealing everything we can on the way, and go into what I used to call the Hell Zone. I believe they reduced the number of enemies in it slightly for Royal.

Morgana: “The distortion is getting stronger… the Treasure has got to be nearby!”

SaturnJoker: There’s no enemies here, so we’re free to go past the titty hallway…

SaturnJoker: And through the ass gallery…

SaturnJoker: That, my friends, is the traditional Dark Souls Shortcut Elevator. The latter half of Kamoshida’s Palace takes a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls.

Morgana: “Could be a hidden room. Let’s check it out, Joker!”

SaturnJoker: This elevator is a bit of side content I never did in the base game. It’s in there, but I didn’t do it for a good reason. We’ll see what that is shortly.

SaturnJoker: There’s another elevator in front of us that leads to a mini-boss. We have no reason to do that mini-boss. Doing it would be a mistake… but I wound up doing it anyway.

SaturnJoker: Instead, we want to go down this hallway.

Morgana: “Either way… it’s kind of strange that this would be our dead end.”

SaturnJoker: This puts us back in the entrance hall, on the bottom floor.

SaturnJoker: We can use this to create a shortcut. There’s not much of a reason to do so, because there’s two more save rooms in the Hell Zone, but this will allow us to get back to the second save room without warping.

SaturnJoker: We can also open this door, which leads back to the first save room.

SaturnJoker: More important, however, is this room that we couldn’t get to before. It has a lever in it that will allow us to meet an old friend.

Morgana: “I see. I bet we can access an area that we couldn’t before. Good eye, Joker!”

SaturnJoker: This lever activates the second elevator.

SaturnJoker: I honestly don’t know what was down here in the base game, but in Royal they replace it with the last will seed.

SaturnJoker: Ann is going to regret those words.

SaturnJoker: Meet Mara. Apparently, he’s no longer Toro’s Persona and now he’s just… here.

Mara: “This is character assassination! I’m way more turgid than that!”

SaturnJoker: Mara is a shitfest of a fight. For one thing, he’ll always attack Ann if he can. He resists everything that isn’t straight up physical damage (including guns) and can oneshot Ann if she’s not guarding.

SaturnJoker: So yeah, he oneshots Ann. I should mention that Mara looks so… different… because they’re using his appearance from Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE, Atlus’s failed MMO attempt.

SaturnJoker: He then oneshots Morgana, so I had to get them both back up so as to not miss out on EXP.

SaturnJoker: Once we get Mara down, we get the last will seed for Kamoshida’s Palace.

SaturnJoker: This nets us the Crystal of Lust, an item that looks like a bootleg Behelit. It gives whoever has it equipped the ability to cast Diarama, which is overkill for healing at this point in the game.

Skull: “C’mon, Mona! You never told us what these Will Seeds do!”

Morgana: “I mean, I never expected anything less than that to happen!”

SaturnJoker: First you want to step on Mara, and now you’re having second thoughts about taking Kamoshida’s JO crystal?

Morgana: “A phantom thief makes use of any available tool to accomplish a mission. Who knows what we’ll find next? If we find ourselves in a situation where this could be useful, let’s see what it can do!”

SaturnJoker: Back in the Hell Zone, we can start dealing with some of these new enemies.

SaturnJoker: First up is Succubus. In the base game, Succubus was a fucking nightmare to deal with (thanks LaZodiac for reminding me) because the only spell they had was Marin Karin. Royal inadvertently turned them into your best friend by replacing Marin Karin with Dormina. There is one minor downside to being asleep, though.

SaturnJoker: You see, if you hit an enemy who is asleep,. you get what’s called a “Technical”. It does more damage, but it’s not the same thing as a crit - you don’t get an extra press turn. This kind of kills Sleep as a means of recovery just a little bit.

SaturnJoker: There’s a chest here, but it’s locked and I didn’t have a pick for it. This is fine - chances are it’s something for Morgana and we’re ditching him ASAP.

SaturnJoker: Shit.

SaturnJoker: And I get spotted and ambushed. This isn’t as bad as it seems: at this point, we can pretty easily Rush down Berith with physical attacks.

SaturnJoker: Then a group of Incubi and Succubi join the fight.

SaturnJoker: One of them surrenders.

New Persona: Succubus

Origin: Abrahamic Mythology

First Appearance: Megami Tensei (NES)

Female demon that devours life energy through sex.

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SaturnJoker: Succubus has been nerfed to shit from Persona 1 and Persona 2, where she absorbed everything (P1) or reflected it (P2) in exchange for having a trash moveset. Here, she still has a trash moveset but no amazing resistances to make up for it.

SaturnJoker: Gotta love the look on John Persona’s face.

SaturnJoker: Right by the stairs to the next floor is a save room. I grab it, but generally you never want to warp here because that Berith is right outside and will more often than not spot you as soon as you leave.

SaturnJoker: Part two of the Hell Zone is this room, which is two tiers and has a Berith walking around. In the base game, this floor sucked. In Royal, however…

SaturnJoker: The first enemy is two Angels. Now, here’s the thing. In the base game, Angels were only weak to Gun, and because you had a grand total of like 20 bullets between the entire party, they were not a fun fight. Even worse, in the base game Angels were level 12 and had Self-Destruct, a full-party attack that did lots of damage.

SaturnJoker: In Royal, Angels had their level lowered to 9, their HP cut almost in half, and retain their Gun weakness. I kind of wish they’d left them at Level 12, because that’d be better EXP.

SaturnJoker: The last one surrendered, so I took it and overwrote Succubus.

SaturnJoker: I do this for three reasons. First, Succubus is Moon arcana, which is a confidant that does not get bonus points for having a matching Persona. Second, Angel’s moveset is better - Kouha is our first source of Bless damage. Third, Angel is the lowest-level Justice Persona, and we’re going to need one of those pretty soon.

SaturnJoker: Shortly after that, we run into another enemy that can be a Disaster Shadow - Angel is the third and final one. This Incubus explodes and gives us a free Soul Drop.

SaturnJoker: There’s some chests with healing items we don’t care about.

SaturnJoker: See that chest? It’s the sneakiest one in the dungeon.

SaturnJoker: When we get close, it gets walled off. Nothing to do now but try that other hallway.

SaturnJoker: Sure is Sen’s Fortress around here.

Morgana: “It’s a classic security measure. My tail might be in danger if we try to force our way through…”

Skull: “Oh yeah, same for Panther’s. So… what do we do? No way we’re gettin’ through here as is.”

SaturnJoker: This entire segment is a direct reference to Xibalba in Innocent Sin and now I appreciate it a lot more.

Morgana: “I didn’t think it would be that easy. We’ll probably need some kind of key for it…”

Skull: “We gotta look for a key again? What a pain in the ass…”

Panther: “Where would it be though? There weren’t any suspicious rooms on the way here.”

Morgana: “Hm… what do you think, Joker?”

SaturnJoker: Oh, I know! I know! This is just like Xibalba, so we say that we don’t need a key and then we find a way that doesn’t involve a key and skip another trip through the Hell Zone!

Morgana: “Hm… that probably would be the most likely scenario…”

SaturnJoker: Fuck you, Morgana! You fucked it all up!

Skull: “An enemy? Y’mean one of those Shadows that’s roamin’ around? Dude, how man yof 'em do you think there are? We can’t beat the crap outta all of them!”

SaturnJoker: We kind of already did.

Morgana: “The key is for the tower, so it would have to be one of the Shadows around here. On top of that, it would have to be a relatively high-ranking one.”

Panther: “Then we just need to look for Shadows like that and defeat them!”

SaturnJoker: Back in the Hell Zone, a gold-armored enemy appears, and when we ambush it… it’s Eligor.

SaturnJoker: This was actually a fairly tough fight in the base game, but in Royal we simply gun him down before he even gets a turn.

Skull: “Hey, that Shadow did have something… but what the hell is this? An eye?”

Panther: “Oh yeah… now that I think about it, the statue didn’t have eyes…”

Skull: “Ugh, how much grosser can he get? So this is gonna stop those things, huh?”

Morgana: “Well, we’ll need one more. Another guard captain probably has it. Let’s try checking the other floors, Joker!”

Morgana: “That would work, but there should only be one actual guard captain among them. Do you have any way to tell them apart, Joker? I’d think you of all people would have the skills to figure out which is the real one.”

SaturnJoker: Just leave it to me. Trust me, my logic is fucking airtight. So, remember the “Who Is The Captain?” mission in Sonic 2006? You solve that by talking to the first guy you see, and since Sega bought Atlus, they forced them to reference it here.

SaturnJoker: It’s gotta be this one.

SaturnJoker: Actually, it’s not. The first two are a group of two Incubi and two Succubi. The way you’re supposed to find the real one is that it’s higher level.

SaturnJoker: The real captain is another Eligor. Morgana gives you a tutorial about doing Technicals, but we just gun this one down too. Royal turned this entire dungeon into a joke, apart from Mara.

SaturnJoker: On our way back to the statue, I encountered two Disaster Angels in a row. The first one I didn’t even notice and killed it without thinking. This was two more Soul Drops for our collection. By the way, Archangels show up as regular enemies now. They’re still level 14, but have greatly reduced stats from the one we fought as a boss.

SaturnJoker: We put the eyes into the statue and we can cross.

SaturnJoker: In the middle is a chest with a Breath Ring, which increases max HP. I gave it to Ann.

SaturnJoker: We’ve finally done it. Everyone is level 11, and we have nearly 60,000 yen (in fact, as I write this, I’m still grinding for money and I was over 60k and hadn’t left yet). There’s a save room up here, and now it’s time to end this.

SaturnJoker: Okay, first the chest. Then we end it. It’s got a Physical Guard in it, which reflects a single physical attack.

Morgana: “Quiet down, you idiot!”

SaturnJoker: Relax, we’ve got this. Anne has an SMG, which is clearly the most suited for sniping him from the balcony. We just put a bullet in him and that’s it.

Panther: “And a ton of soldiers…”

SaturnJoker: Bring it! I still have most of my SP, and with Kamoshida dead that’s nothing.

SaturnJoker: Kamoshida is very confused as to how all of his demons have been riddled with bullets.

Morgana: “I bet he’d never imagine we’re in the same room as him. Come on, let’s keep going.”

SaturnJoker: Why do we even need the treasure? Just steal all the gold and book it.

Skull: “That Treasure thing’s gotta be in here!”

Morgana: “Just hold on a second. I was planning on telling you more once we made it this far. Simply finding the Treasure isn’t enough. We’ll need to make it materialize before we can steal it.”

Skull: “Whaddya mean?”

Morgana: “Desires have no physical form by nature. Hence, we’ll first need to make the real person aware that their desires are in fact a Treasure.”

SaturnJoker: I call bullshit. I have at least two desires in physical form: a translated copy of the PSP version of Eternal Punishment and for Toshiya Wakabayashi to stop being a dick and translate the rest of Kanako’s Life As An Assassin. Oh, and for the Game Center CX translators to get on the Earthbound episodes, but I’ve been told they’re already doing that.

Morgana: “Once they’re conscious that their desires might be stolen, the Treasure will finally show itself.”

Panther: “But how do we do that?”

Skull: “So we’re gonna send a calling card!? That’s totally what a phantom thief would do!”

Skull: “That again? Either way, sounds like it’s worth givin’ it a shot!”

Morgana: “Our infiltration route is secure. All that’s left now is to pump out a calling card in reality, then come back to take the Treasure!”

SaturnJoker: Calling cards are a very Lupin III thing. Not so much Arsene Lupin. He does it a few times, but not always.

Panther: “This is it, huh?”

Morgana: “That’s the spirit! Once we send out the calling card, there will be no turning back. Just let me know when you’re ready. We’ll head back to the hideout and send out that calling card!”

SaturnJoker: So yeah, here’s the thing about Persona 5. Unlike Persona 4, where we could clear dungeons in one day, all dungeons in Persona 5 take at LEAST two days, with the bossfight being a separate day. Some take more.

SaturnJoker: Next time, we’ll get introduced to another new feature in Royal, see how far I can grind before I get bored (currently at level 12 with over 60,000 yen) and then do a few more days of confidants and stat-raising before we kill Kamoshida, since I accidentally posted this update before I finished it.

SaturnJoker: Before I stop though, let me show you some fusions I did. Unlike the other LP, what I’m basically doing is crunching our current Persona roster down and getting better Personas out of it. Mokoi is one, which I make by fusing Silky and Angel.

New Persona: Mokoi

Origin: Australia

First Appearance: Soul Hackers (Saturn in Japan, 3DS otherwise)

Evil spirits who kill magic users. They also kidnap and eat children. In the real world, we call these emus.

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SaturnJoker: I also fuse Berith and Mandrake into Slime, which is Chariot arcana. We already have Mokoi, so we don’t need Mandrake as a Death Persona anymore.

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SaturnJoker: Slime sucks, but I fuse him anyway because he’s level 10 and it’s free to do so. Now that we have Berith in the Compendium, he’s super easy to negotiate with… and yes, I remembered to grab one before I left.

SaturnJoker: I also fuse Kodama out of… I forget what. Kodama is Star arcana, and will be very useful later on when I need a cheap Star Persona for confidants. Star is one of the best confidants in this game.

New Persona: Kodama

Origin: Japan

First Appearance: SMT Nocturne (PS2)

Japanese tree spirit. Said to bring bad luck if the tree it lives in is cut down - such trees are marked with a sacred rope.

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SaturnJoker: Kodama is special because he is our first source of Psychic damage… assuming I ever level him to 12.

SaturnJoker: Oh right, one last thing. Remember how I talked about that sneaky chest? To get it, you have to go around the pendulum room and then grapple over the weird hell geometry - it’s in the middle. The game fools you by putting a different chest on an identical-looking table just outside the hell blocks, making you think it’s the same one you saw from the far side. Baptismal Water removes all buffs on an enemy.

SaturnJoker: Here’s the music for this update.

Music Mid-Boss Theme

SaturnJoker: I didn’t realize until after I made the image that the mid-boss theme is called “Keeper of Lust”. It plays when you fight the Archangel in the church and Mara in the hidden room. It also plays during all of the tutorial battles.

Music King Queen and Slave

SaturnJoker: This one is Kamoshida’s palace theme.

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For whatever reason this one screenshot has me cracking up because it’s almost like those bits in Yakuza 0 where Majima would be peeking out from behind a streetlight pole like he was totally hidden. I could see John Persona ducking behind a pole and still making eye contact with a guard.

Also, the plot of this game is basically just Inception With Anime School Stereotypes But Everything Takes Longer?

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While I can’t say they took inspiration from Inception because I don’t know much about the creative process behind this game, it certainly doesn’t help that yeah, they basically turned it into Inception.

Persona 4 also had individualized shadows, but they worked differently - they were basically just kinda there and would kill you if you didn’t acknowledge them.

That’s not even the funniest pose, by the way. Maybe I’ll try my GIF creator I just downloaded on it, but if you get ambushed (which puts your characters back to back in the middle of a circle of enemies) you can have a situation where your character is aiming their gun one way and shooting enemies that are behind them.

Uh… so she’s a bio terrorist with amnesia? Or do you mean Naomi, because Trauma Team is really more of an ensemble cast, and I’m… still pretty confident they don’t have anything similar despite being vaguely goth (and Naomi isn’t even a doctor in Team…). You’re more than welcome to make the comparison to series that you think P5 is ripping off but I don’t see any resemblance between Tae and The Prisoner.

MORT. DEATH. The card that represents Major Change, and a subtle reminder that You Will Die. This is the Persona series, starting with 3 anyway, with the best written social links I think… at least in my experience. In the Marseilles variant, Mort is actually meant to come off as LESS spooky. It is the Nameless Card, with only a number, because Mort does not MEAN death, it means “a change will happen in your life”. For me, the Death Card represents my transition, or moving to my own apartment.

As for how P5 presents it; whatever the change is going to be, it is going to be bad. The reaper is beheading the poor people, instead of putting them to rest. Tae is going to be a bad time for you, and is representative or Joker’s new criminal life; a hard and difficult change he’ll have to deal with.

Because they’re rad as shit but are structurally unsound.

Thinks about how my first encounter with Succubus had it charm Joker and wipe the party
Yeah sure Timrod. Sure.

Oh, right! It’s been so long since I played P5 the first time. It was Incubus who was your friend in the first game because he had Dream Needle and basically did fuck-all for damage. They actually completely de-fanged Succubus in Royal by replacing Marin Karin as their only spell with Dormina.

Yeah, I meant Naomi. That’s actually off the wiki, I didn’t come up with that. They did that based on the fact that Tae and Naomi have similar backstories and share a VA. I don’t want to go into it further because I don’t think we’ll actually see that until… probably after the third dungeon. Tae’s confidant is something you do until she sells the accessories, and then you stop doing it until the end of the game.

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Understandable. I’ll touch more on it when we get to there then, because uh… I’m having some difficulty seeing any similarities beyond very slight appearance and voice actress. Once we do learn more, perhaps I’ll see what they mean.

Man in P4 they complained about not having anything out in the country, but you could just buy medicine at the grocery store. In Tokyo you need to find a back-alley doctor to hook you up.

In other news, I appreciate (?) that even after all these years they still haven’t abandoned Angel’s amazing (?) BDSM blindfold design.

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The Angel design is excessively extra and honestly I’m all here for it. The lowest circle angels being literally bound and forced to serve God’s fits SMT’s depiction of the Law alignment perfectly and I’d never want them to change it.

Click Here for Update 9

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You might notice from the header that this update takes place on 04/27/2016 when the last update was 04/20/2016. This is because the routing that the 100% guide uses leaves a 7-day gap due to a couple of major social stat bonuses we otherwise would miss out on.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: When we left the dungeon on 04/20, I grinded out just over 100k yen. This is far more money than the game expects us to have. I checked, and unfortunately I don’t have the saves from this point in my base game run, but I can tell you I had a lot less money than that. The entire party is level 13, putting them two levels above the boss.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’ll also briefly mention that the only reason I was able to grind like this was because of the replenishing gun ammo. There’s an encounter right outside the throne room that will always be two Angels and an Archangel.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By using some creative moves (ie; having Joker purposely only shoot one Angel and then Baton Passing to Morgana or Ryuji to shoot the second one, then having them Baton Pass to Ann) you can pretty consistently get the last standing Angel to surrender.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We then get somewhere between ~800 and ~1600 yen in addition to whatever money we get from killing the other Angel and the Archangel, as well as a load of EXP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The game gives us a log of everything we did in the dungeon once we leave… which is everything.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Several days of stat raising, part-time jobs, a few confidant events, buying nasty drinks, almost permafucking, and making coffee later…

Ryuji: “Couldn’t we have just sent one at the beginnin’ of all this?”

Morgana: “It’s not that simple. A Treasure won’t stay materialized forever. Once the impression is gone, the Treasure will disappear. I think it’ll last around a day at most.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is kind of weird, but what we’re doing is sending the calling card today so that Kamoshida finds it tomorrow, and then going in to kill his shadow.

Ryuji: “The hell…? That’s like no time at all… anyways, we can send a callin’ card right now, yeah? Let’s do it and steal that bastard’s heart!”

Morgana: “The Palace will go away once you take the Treasure. Make sure you’ve done everything you need to.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In another strange homage to Innocent Sin, we can’t go back to a dungeon once we’ve cleared it. There’s an equivalent to the Abandoned Factory if we need to fight the enemies again, but anything we haven’t gotten: the stealable vendor trash, will seeds, anything in chests will all be gone. Thankfully, we’ve gotten everything we could conceivably need, apart from that one locked chest I couldn’t open.

Ann: “So we send the calling card in the morning… and carry out the plan by the end of the day, right?”

Morgana: “Correct. The effect won’t last long. Are you worried?”

Ann: “Heh. Waited too long.”

Morgana: “Perfect.”

Morgana: “So, who’s going to write the card?”

Ryuji: “Leave it to me!”

Ann: “Why?”

Ryuji: “Why? Why wouldn’t it be me?!”

Ann: “This is important. Are you sure you can handle the pressure?”

Morgana: “I must agree.”

Ryuji: “I really wanna get him good! Lemme write it… c’mon, please?”

Ryuji: “Yeah, I got this!”

Ann: “Hey, are you sure about this? If they find out our identities, all this work will be for nothing…”

Ryuji: “I know, I know!”

Morgana: “All right then! Tomorrow it is! You’d better not slack off on this.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The game gives you a tutorial on this, but the day you send the calling card for a dungeon is taken up ENTIRELY by sending the calling card. It used to be that it would take up the night time block too, but that was changed in Royal.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This sounds like the worst-written magical girl show ever. I mean, it’s not like Eternal Punishment had a cast made up ENTIRELY of adults, or that Innocent Sin had two adult party members.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The whole “all adults are shit” theme is going to be an ongoing thing. It sucks and I hate it. Let me just put things in perspective here: Persona 4 came out in 2008. People who were in high school then were adults by the time this game released in the west. Moreover, this game has an M rating.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s a new crossword tonight. I wish they’d give you whatever letters you want so I could have done “BOOBIES” which I think we all know is the correct answer for any blank with seven spaces.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Even though we have more points in Knowledge than I’m pretty sure we did in Guts or Charm, we’re still not at level 2 yet.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I then spend our night crafting lockpicks. We got a load of crafting materials from the dungeon and they can’t be sold, so might as well.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We get a special marker on the calendar with Ryuji’s logo on it.

Ann: “…Wow.”

Ryuji: “Not bad, eh? I looked up a bunch of similar stuff online for reference.”

Ann: “Um, yeah.”

Morgana: “Your logo’s a little lacking too.”

Ryuji: “Okay, y’know what? Th-that ain’t true!”

Ryuji: “It got everyone excited, so it’s all good, yeah?”

Morgana: “…Look at that. A predictable reaction for someone who knows what we mean by distorted desires.”

Ryuji: “I think it’s hittin’ him pretty hard.”

Kamoshida: “So, you’re playing dumb? Eh, it’s not a problem. You’ll be expelled soon enough anyway.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Persona 5 Royal is bought to you by grape jelly. Grape jelly, ideal for screens of all shapes and sizes.

Morgana: “Judging from Kamoshida’s response… I’m sure we had an effect on his Palace!”

Ann: “Does that mean the Treasure’s appeared!? We’ll be able to get it today, right?”

Morgana: “It’s not just ‘today’. It’s ONLY today. The impact of seeing a calling card doesn’t last long, and it cannot be repeated. This will be our once chance to steal the Treasure.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The quotes are probably around the wrong word but whatever.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We are then automatically dumped outside of the palace. Thankfully, they did not change out the instrumental version of Life Will Change that plays instead of King, Queen and Slave.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I really, really wanted to do a video of me running through the entire dungeon to get to the throne room. There’s just one problem - while the game despawns most of the enemies, it doesn’t despawn all of them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yeah… reassigned. Sure. Reassigned to the corpse pile, maybe.

Morgana: “Either way, we win as long as we can steal the Treasure! Let’s keep going!”

Skull: “Man, it’s huge!”

Morgana: “What do you think!? It’s just as I said! Now we can steal it! Ahh… this shine brings tears to my eyes…”

Panther: “It kinda pisses me off. Why’s it so pretty? Isn’t this Kamoshida’s desires?”

Morgana: “T-Treasure…”

Skull: “Uh, the cat’s actin’ awfully excited.”

Panther: “What’s wrong? Is something…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is the one moment I don’t hate Morgana, because the Japanese VA does hilarious cat noises.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If this was Lupin III, Kamoshida would step out right now and go “I saw this coming, so I replaced the crown with a crown-shaped cat food dispenser that I then dipped in catnip!” because that’s just kind of how Lupin III (at least, Red Jacket) was.

Skull: “All right, that’s enough, you stupid cat!”

Morgana: “Oh, um, yeah… forgive me for displaying such an insolent sight in front of a lady…”

Panther: “You were completely out of character too. What was that about?”

Morgana: “I couldn’t stop it either… to think I’d be drawn to human desires this much… doesn’t that prove I’m human!?”

Skull: “How should we know!?”

Morgana: “A-Anyway, you guys need to carry it!”

Skull: “All you do is bark orders… still, that was easier than I thought! I thought for sure there’d be some insane trap or something.”

Panther: “His Palace will disappear if we take this back, right? And Kamoshida will change too…”

Morgana: “…That should be the case.”

Skull: “Good. Now’s our chance then.”

Morgana: “To think it’d go so well… I’ve even found three Persona-users in the process… my judgement was correct. I made the right choice in making a deal with you!”

Morgana: “Nyahaha!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And… here’s Kamoshida.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Shadow Kamoshida spikes a volleyball at the giant crown, which causes it to roll off into the distance.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We’ve now entered the Anime Realm, where Kamoshida can do dumbass ninja flips for no reason. I mean, I guess Joker can too so it kinda balances out.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Wait a second… why does he have two crowns? I get that’s an actual thing some medieval lords did, but still. You’d think it’d be more secure on him than in a vault.

Panther: “That rat bastard… that’s how he sees me, isn’t it!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: No shit! How have you not figured this out already!?

Skull: “Yo, pervert. Were you waitin’ to ambush us?”

Kamoshadow: “I just made it easy to find you. I’ll dispose of you myself. Right here, right now.”

Skull: “That’s our line, you sexually-harrassin’ d-bag!”

Kamoshadow: “What a selfish misunderstanding…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Just take this line in. Take in how awkward it is.

Kamoshadow: “People around me were the ones who kept it a secret. Adults who want to share in my accomplishments, students who have the drive to become winners… they willingly protect me so that we all may profit from it.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What is this guy, Dracula? Should someone call Richter Belmont?

Skull: “Profit!?”

Kamoshadow: “There are too many imbeciles who don’t understand that! Including naive brats like you and that girl who tried to kill herself!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This actually is fairly good, if still slightly awkward, writing.

Kamoshadow: “Drop the attitude, you mediocre peasant! There is no wrong in using my gifts for my gain! I’m a cut above all other humans!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Seriously this sounds like Atlus found the guy who localized Symphony of the Night and asked him to write Kamoshida.

Panther: “Above? You mean beneath. You’re a goddamn demon obsessed with your sick desires!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meet Kamoshida’s true form: Asmodeus. Honestly, this would’ve been a lot better if it was like the earlier games where people just had evil Personas.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Unlike pretty much every other Persona boss fight, Shadow Kamoshida/Asmodeus is a very scripted puzzle fight. It was changed A LOT from how it was in the base game. I watched a video of it (because it’s been so long since I did it myself) and realized I was wrong on one thing.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In the original version, you actually had closer to 100 bullets. The way it worked was that each character had exactly three full attacks worth of ammo - so Ann had 36 bullets, Morgana had 15, Joker had 21 and Ryuji had 12. You could only fire 1/3 of your total ammo count at once, though.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In this form, the only attack Asmodeus will use is Volleyball Assault, which I’m almost positive was nerfed in Royal. In the original game, it hit 1 to 3 times. In Royal, I believe they lowered the chances of it hitting more than once to like a tenth of what they were, and the chances of it hitting three times to virtually zero.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: That’s one of the things I saw people complain about actually, was that this game was HEAVILY de-fanged from how it was.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I blew all my ammo at the start, which was kind of a mistake but didn’t matter. Once Kamoshida takes enough damage, he uses Libido Boost.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This causes him to take one of the pairs of disembodied legs from the chalice and eat it. Libido Boost regains 100% of Asmodeus’s HP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This was also in the original game.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: At this point, Asmodeus uses “Lustful Slurp”, which boosts his attack for the rest of the fight. Yes, that’s Anne’s clone in the wine glass.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And from this point on, the only thing he’s going to be doing is using Golden Knife to hit Morgana for a shitload of physical damage. I could’ve made Morgana guard but he has both Diarama and Media to heal with.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: According to the wiki, they boosted the HP of the chalice from 500 to 900 in Royal… but the chalice went down WAY too fast for it to be 900 HP. I only used physical attacks on it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: With the chalice down, we get a Hold Up on Asmodeus.

Skull: “I always saw you as a condescending hotshot, but right now… you’re just a pathetic loser.”

Panther: “We came all this way to steal that! Will you just give up and hand it over?”

Morgana: “You still have the energy to say things like that!? Then we’re going to up our game as well!”

Kamoshadow: “I’m the king! If not, then who is!? How dare you keep defying me… looks like I gotta bring out the big guns!”

Kamoshadow: “Slaves! Bring over you-know-what!”

Kamoshadow: “Time for my killshot from when I was active and rockin’ it! Killshot as in… I’ll make the kill! What’s the holdup? Where’s my ball!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Introducing the new phase to Kamoshida’s boss fight. This was mostly done to make it feel like less of a cop-out. I’ll explain what happens in the base game shortly.

Kamoshadow: “Too slow, Mishima! Worthless chump!”

Skull: “M-Mishima!?”

Panther: “Wait, what!? Why’s he here?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The writers really expected that we wouldn’t understand the whole “Kamoshida can make clones of people” thing even though Mishima is introduced as “Cognitive Yuuki Mishima”.

Morgana: “Calm down! That’s only Kamoshida’s cognitive version of him! It’s not the real Mishima!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Gold Medal Spike hits like a goddamn nuke. In the base game, he was scripted to get two of these off if you did everything right.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meet Kamoshida’s version of Shiho. I believe she existed in the game files for the original game but went unused.

Skull: “Dammit, even Suzui too! You’ve gone too far, you piece of shit!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I have a feeling they cut this from the original game because they were afraid people would think that attacking the fake Shiho would be a permafuck down the line or something. They explain that no, it’s not the real one AGAIN (I cut it) before Ryuji’s line here.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You know your game has issues when you have to explain this shit like six times because people are that paranoid of a permafuck.

Morgana: “What do we do?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It actually doesn’t matter what we answer. Allow me to explain. You can stop the second killshot either by doing around 300 damage to Asmodeus or killing Shiho. Shiho is weak to everything to the point where just about anything will kill her in three hits. This is where you want to use your guns if you have them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By the way, did I mention I grinded Kodama up enough that it can use Psi? Psychic is a new damage type in Persona 5, probably replacing Gravity since Nuclear is back in as a thing.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Now, as soon as I saw this my brain immediately went places. Let’s say hypothetically that Atlus put in another stage of the fight where Kamoshida jams Fake Ann and Fake Shiho together in a manner much like the fusion dance in Dragonball Z.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Would the resulting monstrosity have three ponytails? Would they just up that to nine for the whole nine-tailed fox thing? Would it be one giant ponytail with a number of sub-ponytails like that seven-branched sword they used as the base for Morion Blade in Dark Souls 3?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What I’m saying is that Akira Toriyama is a coward for not addressing these issues.

Panther: “Kamoshida, I’ll never forgive you!”

Skull: “Sorry, Suzui… I swear we’ll beat that bastard’s ass!”

Morgana: “We won’t get anywhere with brute force…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We can send any of our party members, but Ann will mention that she thinks Kamoshida can smell her. Ryuji is going to be the one to bring Kamoshida down. In the original game, it cuts right to this before the second killshot and you just keep beating on Kamoshida for a few turns before the person you sent takes him out.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’d like to point out that in the tutorial for this, their party is level 9 - that’s pretty much where you’d be in the base game. We’re way overgrinded.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The rest of this fight is basically just doing attacks against Kamoshida as Ryuji slowly climbs his way up to the balcony. You’re not going to kill Kamoshida during this time unless you’re on a second playthrough.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: At this point, Kamoshida goes into a “dejected” state where he loses all of his defense. This fight was pretty easy even in the base game, mostly because I think Atlus realized how limited your ability to grind was.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Our party hits level 14, which is higher level than a good number of the enemies in the next dungeon.

Panther: “What’s wrong? Not running away?”

Panther: “Why don’t you run? Aren’t you a great athlete?”

Kamoshadow: “It’s always been like this… all those goddamn hyenas forcing their expectations on me! I’m doing all this for them! What’s wrong about demanding a reward for that!?”

Skull: “Now you’re makin’ excuses? We’ll do something about that distorted heart of yours.”

Kamoshadow: “Hrrrgh…”

Panther: “Scared?”

![obs64 2020-09-08 15-55-40-64|690x387](upl

oad://aXAlGt11vAOSl72n4ZfIIH0CZ17.jpeg)

Panther: “What will you do? Will you jump? Or would you rather die here?”


Honestly, it would’ve been great if Kamoshida’s shadow committed suicide just to avoid having to confess all the shit he did. Would’ve been a good callback to Innocent Sin.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This honestly doesn’t work. If Kamoshida wasn’t cartoonishly evil, it would work, but it doesn’t. This is like the fucking rat in Ni no Kuni 2 all over again. “Hey I killed your dad, not for any reason, just because someone told me I was physically capable of doing so” and then everything is immediately forgiven.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This entire scene sucks and I hate it. There’s a lot of ways they could’ve made it work - if Kamoshida wasn’t so over the top and there really was a question of whether it was worth killing him to make a point.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I would love to see this scene with the Persona 2 cast. There’d probably be a four-way competition between Baofu, Ulala, Tatsuya and Eikichi to see who could kill him first and shout “DIE!” in response.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: My cat does this all the fucking time and I hate it because it inevitably winds up with me getting my shoulders clawed. I had a lady at work ask if I was in an accident or something once because of how many cuts I had.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I don’t get why Atlus didn’t re-do these cutscenes because a lot of them look kinda low quality.

image

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Same energy. I suppose you could say that Morgana really is just Cat-shihara.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This entire thing is so off-model it hurts. Usually, when a studio releases an anime on Blu-Ray, they improve the quality significantly because they’re not restricted to a TV schedule.

Ann: “…It’s true! We can’t go there anymore.”

Morgana: “What about the Treasure!?”

Ann: “…A medal? Wait, where’d that crown go?”

Ryuji: “What’s goin’ on?”

Morgana: “It means, that was the source of Kamoshida’s desires. To him, this medal is worth as much as that crown we saw in the Palace.”

Ryuji: “An Olympic medal… so, that perv kept clingin’ to his past glory and couldn’t let it go…”

Ann: “But… this means that Kamoshida’s heart might have changed, right?”

Morgana: “…Probably.”

Ryuji: “Our expulsion’s on the line here!”

Morgana: “This is the first successful example for me, too. However, there’s no doubt that this has affected Kamoshida’s personality quite a lot.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I should mention I watched this scene in English to refresh my memory on the original fight, and Morgana’s English VA SUCKS. I don’t know who they are, but they sound bored as fuck at all times.

Morgana: “The entire Palace disappeared, after all.”

Ryuji: “Ugh, I feel all antsy! Ain’t there a way to check now?”

Ann: “Right…”

Morgana: “Come on, why the gloomy faces? Be happy! We completed this with great success, you know.”

Ryuji: “We just don’t know if everything’s okay yet…”

Morgana: “I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine. Remember how Kamoshida’s Shadow said that he’s returning to his self in reality?”

Morgana: “Still… he did seem to regain his conscience somewhat before he disappeared.”

Morgana: “There are definitely those who have been saved thanks to what you’ve done.”

Ann: “Yeah…”

Ryuji: “Anyways, I guess we gotta wait. It all boils down to what’s gonna happen to Kamoshida… or if we’re gettin’ expelled for real…”

Ryuji: “…Right. C’mon, let’s go home.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I don’t know why they give you a second tutorial on this, but you can’t leave Leblanc after doing a dungeon or fighting a boss.

Morgana: “Lady Ann sure is sharp! I’m impressed. Basically, the Treasure changes the shape of things. Once that’s gone, that power no longer works.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This kind of doesn’t make any sense given that no one else changed out of their thief outfit. It would’ve been cool if they’d done something like Kingdom Hearts where the party’s outfits change in each dungeon.

Morgana: “Though the real reason I changed so quickly back then was because I’m so incredibly skilled! How’s that? Isn’t that amazing!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I had already called what Morgana’s deal was by about the middle of the first dungeon and was completely unsurprised when I was right.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I actually forgot to capture how we spent our night action, so I’ll just tack it on to the beginning of next update. It’s nothing important - basically, Joker and Morgana spent their night watching reruns of The X-Files.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By the way, total yen count: 144,945. Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to have too many money problems on this run.

Oh trust me, there are two things that Atlus will absolutely never get rid of. One is Jack Frost, the other is Bondage Angel.

Showing us Kamoshida’s Shio seems… tasteless, considering.

Though it does make me imagine that if she was to join the Phantom Thieves, she’d have an Alice in Wonderland themed outfit because Kamoshida sees Anne as a cat girl and she’s Panther as a Thief…

Yeah, I have a feeling that’s why they had the cognitive Shiho in the game files for the base game but never used them - my guess is that Royal is basically just restoring a beta version of the Kamoshida fight that was then changed into what it was in the base game (where you go pretty much right from destroying the trophy to sending someone to knock the crown off him).

I don’t see why they had to put that back in. They could’ve done it just as well with the fake Ann, since it’s been established that Ann was what Kamoshida wanted the entire time.

Unfortunately though, even as much as it would make sense, Shiho never joins the party. There is an Alice in Wonderland character in P5 Scramble, but it’s a villain.

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Of everything you could do with the concept of the Mind Palace to try to make Kamoshida not a one-note ridiculously evil villain and attach the slightest hesitation to mind-whammying him and making him a vegetable… waiting until after the final boss fight to do it is incredibly weak.

The biggest shocker for this update was that the anime cutscene animators actually had the fabric of Catwoman Catgirl Ann’s suit bunching up when she turned instead of being literally fused with her skin.