Click Here for Update 8
: It’s 4/20, and instead of smoking weed we’re going to head to Kamoshida’s Palace.
: 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.
: Unfortunately, Pirate Legend takes two sessions to finish.
: We’ll be getting Joker a job just a few days from now.
: 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.
: “We basically just have to go to that castle and steal the Treasure from Kamoshida, right?”
: “But wait, what even is a Treasure? I wanna know that before we do anything.”
: “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.”
: “Having said that, even I don’t know what Kamoshida’s Treasure is going to be.”
: “And where can we find it?”
: “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.”
: “Hm? What’s up?”
: “N-nothing. I-I was just thinkin’ we should choose a codename for you too.”
: “A code name?”
: “I’m Skull, he’s Joker, and that’s Mona.”
: “Judging by your costume…”
: “I mean, she’s got that tail and stuff, so… whadda you think, Akira?”
: 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.
: “Wait! Is that what you’re going to call me from now on!? I am SO not down with this!”
: “What do you wanna be called, then?”
: “Um, something better than just a little cat… maybe… ‘Panther’? That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?”
: Too late, she’s Ginko now.
: “Huh? Why?”
: " 'Cause it sounds more… ferocious?"
: “More importantly: Kamoshida!”
: “Oh, right. Let’s go!”
: This is another tutorial, which I’ll skip apart from some of the details.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: “Why’re you spacin’ out like that? It’s kinda hard to tell what you’re thinkin’ sometimes.”
: “Let’s just say he’s a man of high caliber. We’re counting on you, Joker!”
: “So, where do we start?”
: “Safe room…?”
: “It’ll make sense when you see it. Welp, let’s head out!”
: 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.
: 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.
: The door to the main hall is locked, so we have to go around.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: This is the only time we will hopefully ever be seeing Morgana’s finisher screen.
: Past the safe room that we ended up in last time, we find the kitchen.
: 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.
: 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.
: Through the kitchen is a hallway with another tutorial fight that unlocks a new battle mechanic.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: Mandrake sucks and the only reason we have it is to boost Tae’s confidant points.
: Right after this, I run into another group of three Pixies, so I get Ann’s finisher.
: This finisher screen is physically painful to look at.
: 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.
: 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).
: “But the bars’re blockin’ our way in…”
: “If he’s protecting it this securely, it has to be important. That means there should be a way in and out of there.”
: “Joker, do you think you can solve the mystery of this room?”
: 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.
: I didn’t capture it, but you see those goat heads? One of those is a switch.
: “You’re hopeless… don’t you realize how vital a map is?”
: I wish this had existed in Persona 1.
: “It’s a true necessity for a phantom thief. This should make securing a route much easier.”
: “Wait, does it say where the Treasure is on there?”
: “Oh… actually, it seems like this map is incomplete. There might be more of them around.”
: Unfortunately, the top part of the main hall is barred off.
: 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.
: 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.
: You might ask why we can’t just drop down to the first floor, and that’s because that’s the boss arena.
: The door on the other side takes us to a room with a locked chest. These are what we need lockpicks for.
: The Nightwatch Armor is a pretty significant boost over the armor I bought for Joker.
: They then bring up the safe room thing a third time, just in case we somehow didn’t get it the first two times.
: 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.
: Past the second safe room is another tutorial hallway, this time teaching us how to use Batman Vision on enemies.
: This is actually kind of useless, because most of the shadows above our level are marked in a different way.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: At the end of that hallway is a storage room, and the only door leading out is locked.
: This is fine, because we can just go through the vents.
: 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.
: I think we all know who he is by now so I’m not going to log him.
: We also get a tutorial on how to negotiate. Generally, Irritable and Gloomy are the hardest ones to deal with.
: 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.
: 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?
: “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.”
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: The area by the third safe room has a barred door because this is Resident Evil now.
: “Wait, there’s a round indentation underneath… it looks like it won’t move until we fill that.”
: “So we need a key… I wonder where it could be.”
: I forgot to capture it, but all of the rooms on this floor are full of books. This one is the Queen Book.
: The one closest to the save point has the Slave Book…
: And the third room has the Beefcake Book, which sounds like what would happen if you tried to novelize Ram Ranch.
: 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.
: “A library, huh? This definitely seems fishy.”
: It seems fishy because Kamoshida is probably illiterate.
: “Whaddya mean?”
: “Come on, it’s a library in a castle. There has to be some kind of secret mechanism in here.”
: 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”.
: There’s also three glowing slots in the bookshelf, because this isn’t enough of a Resident Evil puzzle.
: “Hm… wait a second. The books on this shelf seem familiar.”
: “These’re the names of the volleyball team members! Wait, what the hell? All of the titles are boys from our school!”
: “Ryuji Sakamoto: The Vulgar Ape. There’s one here for Skull.”
: Great job on the whole codename thing, Morgana.
: “That bastard! Who the hell does he think he is!?”
: “Wait, didn’t we find a book earlier? What if we…”
: “Wait a minute… that card…”
: 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.
: “Tracing Kamoshida’s Steps… Kamoshida’s Heroisms… Kamoshida’s Law!? What the hell!? All these books’re about Kamoshida!”
: 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.
: “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!”
: “Ann Takamaki: The Charming Doll. Holy shit.”
: 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.
: “Wait… it’s all pics of her?”
: This is also a direct reference to Persona 4 and the first room that Yosuke and the protagonist find in the TV world.
: “…”
: “Yeah… thanks. If anything, I feel even more motivated to do this now.”
: “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.”
: 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.
: “Is this… a medal?”
: “That size, and that shape… I think that’s our key! Remember that round indentation we saw back near those bars?”
: “Wait, there’s something under the medal too.”
: “So is it gonna tell us where the Treasure is?”
: “That’s a weird-shaped building… could it be a tower or something?”
: 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”.
: “All right! Let’s head over there!”
: “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.”
: Here’s another new thing for Royal. In the base game, there’s no fight in this room.
: Two Bicorns, or as I call them, a Quadricorn. Big deal, we’ll just gun them down.
: This is a “Disaster Shadow”, a new addition to Royal. Disaster Shadows don’t do anything until attacked, at which point they immediately retaliate.
: Morgana then kills it for us, and it drops a Snuff Soul, which restores 50 SP. Disaster Shadows always drop items when killed.
: 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.
: The game then throws another one at us, which explodes and drops a Bead. It’s a free full heal, I’ll take it.
: Right in the middle of the hallway is a bookshelf with bodybuilding books on it.
: “Huh! There IS somethin’ in here! …There we go.”
: 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.
: 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.
: We can now open up the barred door and make progress.
: 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.
: Past that is this room, which looks like a trap but isn’t.
: “This place is huge… yet there are no guards? That seems suspicious…”
: “But the Treasure’s up ahead, right? We don’t got a choice but to keep goin’.”
: “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?”
: “I can’t believe he can think like that… especially after what he did to Shiho…”
: “God, that bastard makes me so freakin’ sick! Just you wait, Kamoshida!”
: 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.
: Archangel almost kills Morgana in one hit, but I win the battle with guns and physical attacks. I could spend SP, but… meh.
: This gets us to Level 8 on everyone but Ryuji for some reason. I’m not sure why that is.
: “What should we do? Head back?”
: “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!”
: Well, Ann and Ryuji are screwed, but…
: 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.
: 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.
: I get ambushed, and Morgana dies pretty quickly even though this is a fight we could solve with guns alone.
: The other LP shows this, but if Morgana goes down, he’ll hide and keep announcing combat.
: 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.
: 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.
: Before that though, we’ve got one last tutorial on a new feature added in Royal.
: “Yeah. By the looks of it, no one’s been in there for a long time.”
: “I wonder what’s over there… should we take a closer look?”
: 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.
: “As far as I can tell, there are two of them left.”
: “Huh? How can you tell? You smell ‘em or somethin’?”
: “Yeah, like how dogs can - oh, but you’re a cat.”
: One thing this tutorial doesn’t show is that getting a will seed restores SP to the entire party.
: We also run into a new enemy: the Kelpie. I grabbed one at some point and got rid of it immediately.
: After looting the main building, the only thing left to do is go into the tower.
: 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.
: 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.
: “Oh! That matches up with the map. There’s no doubt that’s the tower we’re headed for.”
: “Hell yeah, we did it! So… where’s the entrance?”
: “It’s no surprise that security would be tight around here. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Let’s go, Joker!”
: 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.
: There’s loot down there, and at the time I was thinking “I’ll just sneak and grab it later.”
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: I burned our other lockpick on this chest to get a new whip for Ann.
: 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.
: 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.
: Now that we’ve got Berith, we’re good to finish the dungeon.
: 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.
: The vent leads outside, to a chest with some trash attack items I’ll probably sell.
: Just above that is a grapple point, which you can see from outside if you turn Batman Vision on.
: 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.
: “The distortion is getting stronger… the Treasure has got to be nearby!”
: There’s no enemies here, so we’re free to go past the titty hallway…
: And through the ass gallery…
: 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.
: “Could be a hidden room. Let’s check it out, Joker!”
: 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.
: 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.
: Instead, we want to go down this hallway.
: “Either way… it’s kind of strange that this would be our dead end.”
: This puts us back in the entrance hall, on the bottom floor.
: 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.
: We can also open this door, which leads back to the first save room.
: 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.
: “I see. I bet we can access an area that we couldn’t before. Good eye, Joker!”
: This lever activates the second elevator.
: I honestly don’t know what was down here in the base game, but in Royal they replace it with the last will seed.
: Ann is going to regret those words.
: Meet Mara. Apparently, he’s no longer Toro’s Persona and now he’s just… here.
: “This is character assassination! I’m way more turgid than that!”
: 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.
: 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.
: He then oneshots Morgana, so I had to get them both back up so as to not miss out on EXP.
: Once we get Mara down, we get the last will seed for Kamoshida’s Palace.
: 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.
: “C’mon, Mona! You never told us what these Will Seeds do!”
: “I mean, I never expected anything less than that to happen!”
: First you want to step on Mara, and now you’re having second thoughts about taking Kamoshida’s JO crystal?
: “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!”
: Back in the Hell Zone, we can start dealing with some of these new enemies.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: Shit.
: 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.
: Then a group of Incubi and Succubi join the fight.
: One of them surrenders.
New Persona: Succubus
Origin: Abrahamic Mythology
First Appearance: Megami Tensei (NES)
Female demon that devours life energy through sex.
: 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.
: Gotta love the look on John Persona’s face.
: 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.
: 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…
: 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.
: 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.
: The last one surrendered, so I took it and overwrote Succubus.
: 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.
: 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.
: There’s some chests with healing items we don’t care about.
: See that chest? It’s the sneakiest one in the dungeon.
: When we get close, it gets walled off. Nothing to do now but try that other hallway.
: Sure is Sen’s Fortress around here.
: “It’s a classic security measure. My tail might be in danger if we try to force our way through…”
: “Oh yeah, same for Panther’s. So… what do we do? No way we’re gettin’ through here as is.”
: This entire segment is a direct reference to Xibalba in Innocent Sin and now I appreciate it a lot more.
: “I didn’t think it would be that easy. We’ll probably need some kind of key for it…”
: “We gotta look for a key again? What a pain in the ass…”
: “Where would it be though? There weren’t any suspicious rooms on the way here.”
: “Hm… what do you think, Joker?”
: 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!
: “Hm… that probably would be the most likely scenario…”
: Fuck you, Morgana! You fucked it all up!
: “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!”
: We kind of already did.
: “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.”
: “Then we just need to look for Shadows like that and defeat them!”
: Back in the Hell Zone, a gold-armored enemy appears, and when we ambush it… it’s Eligor.
: 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.
: “Hey, that Shadow did have something… but what the hell is this? An eye?”
: “Oh yeah… now that I think about it, the statue didn’t have eyes…”
: “Ugh, how much grosser can he get? So this is gonna stop those things, huh?”
: “Well, we’ll need one more. Another guard captain probably has it. Let’s try checking the other floors, Joker!”
: “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.”
: 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.
: It’s gotta be this one.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: We put the eyes into the statue and we can cross.
: In the middle is a chest with a Breath Ring, which increases max HP. I gave it to Ann.
: 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.
: Okay, first the chest. Then we end it. It’s got a Physical Guard in it, which reflects a single physical attack.
: “Quiet down, you idiot!”
: 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.
: “And a ton of soldiers…”
: Bring it! I still have most of my SP, and with Kamoshida dead that’s nothing.
: Kamoshida is very confused as to how all of his demons have been riddled with bullets.
: “I bet he’d never imagine we’re in the same room as him. Come on, let’s keep going.”
: Why do we even need the treasure? Just steal all the gold and book it.
: “That Treasure thing’s gotta be in here!”
: “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.”
: “Whaddya mean?”
: “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.”
: 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.
: “Once they’re conscious that their desires might be stolen, the Treasure will finally show itself.”
: “But how do we do that?”
: “So we’re gonna send a calling card!? That’s totally what a phantom thief would do!”
: “That again? Either way, sounds like it’s worth givin’ it a shot!”
: “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!”
: Calling cards are a very Lupin III thing. Not so much Arsene Lupin. He does it a few times, but not always.
: “This is it, huh?”
: “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!”
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: 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.
: Kodama is special because he is our first source of Psychic damage… assuming I ever level him to 12.
: 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.
: “As you all know, today is the volleyball rally. Head to the gymnasium once you’ve changed. Got it?”
: “Sakamoto? And you, too…!?”
: “What’s going on here?”
: “Y-Yeah…”
: “Don’t gimme those lies. By the way, you haven’t been hanging around any bad influences, have you?”
: “The National Diet is legislative, the Cabinet is executive, and the Supreme Court is judiciary.”
: “However, I can’t allow that trash to ransack my castle! Strengthen the security! Kill them on sight! I’ll reward whoever brings me their heads.”
: “…I don’t mind.”
: “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.”
: “… You lookin’ for recommendations? I dunno, just buy whatever looks interestin’ to you.”
: “Yes, he lent me a helping hand earlier.”
: “You must all be shocked by what happened with Suzui-san. It was a shock to me too…”
