Mark Danced Crazy - Let's Play Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

[Timrod]

It’s really hard to tell from Yukino’s sprite but I’m guessing she uses a straight razor?

Also I’m guessing Mark just having a battle axe prompted the “Yusuke has swords at the mall” cutscene in 4.

Yukino is actually using a throwing weapon of some sort - all of her weapons do the “thrown” damage type, so I’m assuming she’s carrying a set of kunai or something similar.

I wish more games let me ignore random encounters so hard they leave.

Shin Megami Tensei 1 has something even better: if your protagonist has a high enough luck skill, half the demons you run into suddenly become drunken old guys who ask you if you have any alcohol. I got confused as hell by this because there are bars in SMT1 where you can ostensibly buy alcohol (you actually can’t because your party is all underage) but really it’s just a luck check. The alcohol-loving demons are in fact probably the best way to farm money, because you can just give them some booze from your infinite stash and they’ll give you money for it.

Hey now, don’t go knockin’ Lone Prayer’s… garbled english. That song is wonderful.

I just now realized I forgot to post the actual lyrics to it, so:

For the longest time, I thought they were saying “Live in valid memory, spirits of consciousness” and also “ready for the bridge to nowhere” which made me wonder why a game from 1996 was referencing the infamous Alaska bridge to nowhere project.

[Timrod]

: Once you reach the first floor, it’s pretty much a straight shot to where we entered the hospital from.

: Just like the mainline SMT games, if you run into an enemy you already have the spell card for and try to negotiate with them, they’ll just leave. Unlike SMT, this doesn’t fuck our alignment up.

: And here we are, back in the 1st floor lobby. That nurse there looks like she’s having a bad time.

: “We haven’t time to waste here, Jihei! It’s too late for her, but not for us!”

: It’s funny to me that Nanjo is positioning himself to be this game’s “chaos hero” while Yukino is the “law hero” when usually Atlus plays the whole “punk is chaos” thing straight.

: “Yo, Jihei! The monsters are just around the corner!”

: “Don’t give up! I could really use a hand, Jihei!”

: So, remember how I said that this game doesn’t have an alignment system? It doesn’t, but it has these choices instead. We want to answer all of these in a certain way for reasons that will become important later. For reference, we want to pick the top option.

: “It’s no good! They’re coming!”

: Oh no, it’s two zombies that the MC could actually get to fuck off just by talking to them because we have their spell card. Oh, and Elly is here.

: “Oh, my! There are demons here too?”

: There are two things I find incredibly funny about this. The first is that Elly has taken Nanjo’s position in the front row, and the second is that he’s telling her to get back when she has a weapon and he doesn’t.

: “No worries! I may not look it, but I’m a rather capable fencer.”

: “Eriko! This is no ordinary enemy!”

: “Sheesh! That girl’s crazy!”

: You have to love how in the manga, Elly is just straight up Sailor Jupiter. Nike is basically a straight-up better version of Aizen Myouou: she’s completely immune to all elemental attacks, and while weak to physical attacks takes less of a penalty than Aizen does. Nike also has a feature none of the other starter personas have (at least, from what I remember): if we somehow run into an angel-type persona while Elly still has Nike equipped, Nike will actually do the negotiations for us.

: “Eriko? Hey! Are you okay?”

: “Nike… the archetypal portrayal of Christian angels… it’s me… and I’m it…”

: Someday, I hope someone makes a Persona fan game where one of the characters just has Gritty as a persona and this fact renders them incapacitated for the rest of the game.

: “No good. She’s completely gone.”

: gasp “I-I’m sorry… I’m all right. I am an angelic bringer of victory! From now on, you have my protection!”

: “…You idiot. We can do it too.”

: “R-really? So I’m not the only one who was chosen…”

: “Eriko… you dreamt of the butterfly, didn’t you?”

: “How do you know about that? I’ve seen it quite often in my dreams… ever since I played the Persona game.”

: I don’t quite understand what she’s going on about here. As far as I can tell, this is still the same day: they summoned the ghost girl in the school, got zapped, and then went to the hospital.

: “Just as I thought. That dream must be the cause of the phenomenon.”

: “That aside, why’d you come here? Is it like this outside too?”

: “Yes… there are demons everywhere. And it’s impossible to leave town. I looked everywhere, but it seems that the school is the only safe place.”

: “Oh? The school’s safe? Let’s go back there, Jihei.”

: “What!? Dude, why didn’t you say so before!?”

: As you can see, the nurse presumably made it out. We also now have our fifth party member - this game gives you a total of five, though for some reason I swear I remember having six in the Snow Queen route. Whatever. Anyway, it just now occurred to me that I severely fucked something up and had to restart the game. Remember how we were recruiting Reiji? Yeah, turns out all that has to be done BEFORE you go to the hospital and I missed some steps.

: What you’re supposed to do is that once you’ve talked to Reiji’s mom in the convenience store, you go right to the casino because of course that’s a logical thing that people would do.

: We now get a clue as to where Reiji is, and this is the last time we have to talk to him before going to the hospital.

: Reiji is in an abandoned factory south of the Joy Street mall.

: “Hm…? Masao, is he one of your ‘crew’ as well?”

: “Say what!? Huh…? So you’re the dude with the scar on his head… what’re you doing here?”

: I should probably mention why we’re even bothering with this asshole, since we’re pretty close to the point where we decide what route we’re going on.

: The reason is that for the main route, we have a few possible party members. We’re required to take four: Jihei, Mark, Nanjo, and a fourth who we’ll meet shortly. The fifth character can be one of either Brown, Elly, Ayase, or Reiji.

: The Snow Queen route is a bit different. There, you’re required to take Jihei, Ayase and Yukino. The rest of your party is two of Brown, Elly, or Nanjo. Therefore, to see everyone, we’ll be taking Reiji on the first route and Brown and Elly for Snow Queen.

: I then remembered as I was recording the second run that I never showed off how combat actually works. Combat takes place on a grid, and each character can only hit certain spots depending on where they are in the formation.

: Yukino is our best attacker right now, because she attacks everything in the giant box that is her range.

: I also found this room, which is on the opposite side of the first floor from the entrance. The doctor here will heal the party for free, and the box contains a couple of healing items.

: We’re now out of the hospital and back on the world map, which has different music:

: My favorite part of Persona 1 is how all of the music is totally incomprehensible unless you’re looking at lyrics for it. Anyway, you’ll notice what appears to be a wall of vaporwave around the town, which keeps anyone from leaving.

: The first thing we want to do is go south to where the Joy Street mall and SEBEC building are. You’ll notice that there are two red icons near SEBEC. Against all logic, we need to go there.

: Naturally, Reiji is here. For some reason.

: “Huh? Oh, hey, yeah, it’s Reiji. What’s he doing here?”

: “That dumbass! He’s gonna get himself killed!”

: “Hahaha, sorry to butt in. This guy’s not all there upstairs, you know? C’mon, blockhead. Time to go.”

: “Sheesh, what is that dude up to?”

: “So even you’ll lend a hand to others… interesting. I wouldn’t have thought it.”

: “Idiot! Even guys like him have moms… she’d be sad if he got gunned down.”

: Thankfully, we’re now done with Reiji and Reiji-related bullshit for a while.

: There’s a few new enemy types out on the streets, where there are now random encounters. Unfortunately, due to the whole split level system, we can’t recruit some of them.

: We do, however, pick up a Nacht Kobold. Like most of the early Personas, they’re pretty much useless except as fusion fuel - their stats aren’t great and while they heal off any elemental magic they have a 2x weakness to physical.

: Elly told us that Maki’s mother was at the shrine, so let’s head there.

: Yes Elly, focus on the butterfly and ignore the woman bleeding out on the floor right next to you.

: “Hey… is it me, or is there something strange about this butterfly?”

: “Wh-what’s up with this thing?”

: Oh look, it’s our good buddy, Old Man with Keys. I’ll write out all his dialogue because yeah, white on white was not the best design decision Atlus ever made.

: “We meet again, my friends.”

: "Are you used to your personas now?’

: “As you have seen for yourselves, events are moving in an unexpected direction.”

: “Only those with a strong will are capable of stopping the flow that has gone awry.”

: “From here on, a number of paths will present themselves to you. Down each of them, you will witness the karma of those you meet.”

: “But whatever path you choose… remember that the choice was yours and no one else’s.”

: What he’s trying to do there, by the way, is give you a hint about the Snow Queen quest. You’ll see what the trigger for that is, and it is… another design decision that isn’t great.

: " ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’, evidently."

: “To be present for another once-in-a-lifetime event… how magnificent!”

: Maki’s mother looks a lot like Rachel Maddow.

: “H-Hey! Did you forget about Maki’s mom here?”

: “Lady? Are you okay?”

: “This is a gunshot wound. Who did this to you?”

: “Kandori!? The president of SEBEC?”

: “A device… and you’re saying this machine is causing the changes?”

: So yes, at its core, Persona 1 has essentially the same plot as Shin Megami Tensei 1. In that game, Stephen Hawking winds up summoning demons as part of a teleportation experiment.

: “Oh dear… the police station is already overrun with demons. I just came from there.”

: “…How did you escape, ma’am?”

: “Lady! Whew… she only passed out. We have to get her to the school, quick!”

: “You handle this, Jihei. I’ve got business to take care of.”

: “Wait, Masao. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’ll come with you. Remember, you won’t be able to get near Kandori without this card.”

: “H-Hey! …Tch. Thanks, guys. C’mon, let’s go back to the school ourselves. Honestly! Men never think about how the ones they leave behind feel.”

: “Those two do have a similarly reckless temperament. Well, I’m sure they’ll give up and come back once they see the place.”

: Gotta love how Philemon will heal us for free, but not Maki’s mom. Anyway, the school’s right down the road. We want to head right there because with just Yukino and Elly, fights become much harder to win without devolving into a 10+ minute autobattle slugfest. I should mention by the way that SMT: Persona has probably the best autobattle system I’ve ever seen in a JRPG.

: “You’re all safe? Oh, I’m so glad…”
: “Oh? What happened to her…!?”
: “We’ll tell you later! We need to get her to the infirmary, quick!”
: “You’re right. Jihei, I want you to come with me to the infirmary! Yukino, Eriko, I want you to head to the passageway to the gym. Yuka and Yuko are there plugging up the hole in the wall. Please help them out!”
: “Right… gotta keep the demons from getting in. Will do!”

: “So that’s what SEBEC is up to, huh…? I can’t believe them!”
: “Hey, Jihei? Sorry to ask, but… could you go to the hole and ask Yukino and the others not to fill it up? Masao and Kei might have to come back through there.”

: The passage to the gym is at the corner just behind the infirmary.

: Now, we COULD talk to Ayase and her friend there… or alternatively, we could go to the gym where we’d have no reason to go unless we were doing Snow Queen. I should mention that rather than calling what we’re on the main route, I’m going to use the real name for it: the SEBEC route.

: Anyway, behind the gym are a bunch of club rooms.

: The club rooms have some equipment in them that we won’t be able to come back for, so I grabbed it.

: “I tried to stop her, but of course she doesn’t listen. Talk about trouble…”
: “Is there really a passage that leads outside of town?”

: Yuko’s portrait and character art look like they were done by someone making an RPG maker game. It feels like the kind of thing you’d see in Exit Fate.

: “Hey, if we block this thing up, is that really gonna make us safe? Huh? We’re not blocking it up anymore? Uh… is that okay?”

: The split between the SEBEC Route and the Snow Queen Quest is kind of poorly designed, in that it’s this one single choice. The top option puts us on the SEBEC route and will send us to the police station after Mark. The bottom option immediately puts us on the Snow Queen Quest without any possibility of going back to the SEBEC Route.
: “It’s like, impossible! Don’t do it!”

: Wait… what the shit?

: “Huh? Is… is that you, Maki?”

: I feel like this could absolutely be a line in the script for The Room.
: “What’s wrong, Yuka?”
: “Woah… like, something’s seriously wrong with her, Jihei! There’s no way Maki would be that cheerful!”
: “Huh? Yuka…? Hey, when did that hole show up? Ohhh, I get it. You made it, didn’t you Jihei?”
: “See? It’s totally not like her! I mean, wasn’t she in the hospital?”
: Oh, I get it. Johnny in The Room was like that because he had some kind of horrible anime disease, and now Maki has contracted the same thing. Also, what is it with characters named Maki and having the black/red color thing going on?
: “Yuka! I’m going to get teed off if you keep saying that. Do you WANT me to be hospitalized?”

: Actually, that’s kind of a good point. I’m pretty sure all of the mainline SMT games (I know SMT1 and Strange Journey do it) have a part where a human gets merged with a demon.
: “C’mon, Yuka, quit picking on her! Although… is something different about you today, Yuko…?”

: “Oh, come on! Don’t you start talking nonsense too, Nanjo! What’s wrong, anyway? Why are you so bent out of shape?”

: This right here is why Mark is only in the SEBEC route.
: “He mentioned getting weapons, so I went with him, and then…”
: “Normally, I’d leave him. Unfortunately, he has the security card… I’ll need your help to rescue him.”
: “Demons got Masao!? We need to save him, Jihei!”

: Ahh, here we are. Persona 1 and 2 have a system that Atlus dropped for the later games and only kind of brought back in Persona 5. If you’ve ever played any of the first three SMT games, you’ll know that physical attacks are fucking useless - they do no damage and need major stat investment to really begin to do anything. Guns, on the other hand, require no stat investment and often hit multiple enemies (or all of them) at once. This is still somewhat true in Persona 1.
: “It seems it can be quite draining to invoke one’s Persona. Masao became exhausted after repeated use. That’s how they caught him. But forewarned is forearmed. Don’t forget to equip these.”

: Here’s Jihei with all of our stuff equipped. Thankfully, the game automatically unequips people who leave the party, so we got Elly’s rapier to use instead of nothing. The rapier might look like it does more damage, but the Scorpion SMG hits up to three enemies to the rapier’s one. The only reason we don’t want to use the Scorpion on everything is because some enemies (particularly the zombies we’ve been fighting) are immune to gun damage. I also have to question why a police department in Japan would have a Czechoslovakian 9mm SMG sitting around.

: Nanjo gets an M16A2, which… is actually probably the least farfetched of all the guns we’ve gotten for a police department to have.

: Finally, Maki gets a Russian-made Tokarev pistol. If you’ve played Persona 5 (or Smash Ultimate), this is the same gun Joker starts out with.

: There’s also a bit of an oddity if we look at everyone’s Persona, in that Maki doesn’t have one. As soon as we step back out of the hole in the wall, though…

: I had horrible goddamn flashbacks to YIIK when I saw this.
: “…This is hardly the time for jokes.”
: “Excuse you! I wasn’t kidding.”
: “It’s… a public service that maintains societal order. In this case, it refers specifically to the service’s headquarters.”
: I feel like he’s giving her too much credit.
: “Oh… I think I kinda remember now?”
: “Whoa! What’s with the gym back there? When did they rebuild it?”
: “That happened while you were hospitalized. It’s been complete for roughly six months… you couldn’t have known.”

: And this is the part where we find out that Persona is actually a sequel to Harvester. You always were a kidder, Nanjo.
: “Jihei… does she seem to be suffering from amnesia to you? In her condition, she’ll only be a hindrance.”
: For once, I feel like Chaos Hero here is right and we should just dump her to be eaten by zombies.

: “Maki, don’t do anything foolish!”

: It’s blurry because of the motion, but Maki goes up to whip the demon and misses.

: Maki’s Persona is the closest thing to a Persona 4 or 5 starter Persona in this game. It’s weak only to fire (and even then just barely) and has resistance to all other elements.

: “Persona… the soul’s power. It’s another me, huh?”
: “It’s Latin for mask. It’s the root of the word Personality.”
: “So there are angels and demons within people’s souls? Is that it?”
: “That’s a poetic way of putting it, yes.”
: “As one fights fire with fire, it seems we’ll fight demons with demons. I don’t know the reasons for it, but it should certainly prove useful.”
: “Okay, if this is what we have to do, let’s do it! Let’s root out the source of these demons and get our town back!”

: As I was saying earlier, this game’s auto-battle system is kind of amazing. You’ve got a whole bunch of options here: the first one has the party repeat whatever their last action was, while “set actions” lets you set a specific thing for each character to do.

Next time, we’ll go into the police station and find Mark.

[LaZodiac]

Gritty as a persona and this fact renders them incapacitated for the rest of the game.

This unironically could have happened in P5, and P5’s made it clear that it can and will happen some day.

Man, Maki is… way more obvious about what is going on when the translation isn’t shitty.

[CommanderKeene]

I’m fairly certain that it’s implied that Brown, Yuka, and Elly have all played the Persona game before and encountered the weird apparition, and possibly Philemon. They just haven’t gotten their Personas until now. It’s why Brown was so adamant that Mark was doing something wrong during the opening sequence.

[SpammyV]

“There’s a barrier around the city and demons have shown up.”

“Cool I’ll get my submachine gun.”

Suddenly they seem less like Typical Anime High Schoolers and more like the Wolverines.

[Timrod]

: Here we are at the police station, which is a dungeon in and of itself.
: “Er… yes. Masao should be detained in the prison cells, Jihei. But we can’t access that section without a key. What to do…?”
: “They might have left it somewhere. Let’s see if we can find it.”

: The key is in a locker behind the desk, because this is Persona and not Resident Evil.

: The first floor of the police station is about as straightforward as the hospital was: there’s one clearly correct path and a bunch of dead ends you can see coming thanks to the minimap. Not that I’m complaining: we’ll see a lot of the egregious SMT 1 style bullshit map design in other places.

: The egregious SMT 1 bullshit difficulty, however, is largely still in place. The police station sucks for several reasons. First, we have the weakest Personas in the game. Second, we’ve only got three party members. Third, the enemies here are slightly higher level than we are.

: To make things worse, the guns you start with do nowhere near enough damage to actually kill anything. The game basically expects that you’re going to be spamming magic like crazy. The bird monsters are a new demon type called Ba, and the green gremlin-looking thing is a Leprechaun. Unfortunately, we’re too low-level to negotiate with them.

: I then game overed trying to leave the police station to heal, because I left guns on auto and fought a Preta (which we could kill in one hit at this point) and Pretas reflect gun damage.

: Another random encounter with some new enemies: the Ghost in front and the Ukobach to its right. Again, we can’t really do much with these apart from kill them, though Ukobach is particularly annoying because it likes to spam a group accuracy down move. Most of these random encounters are long and boring, to the point where I eventually set animations to “skip” mode just to cut down on how much time I spend in them.

: All of this constant spell spamming makes our party’s Personas rank up pretty quickly. I realized now that I never explained how rank works, so here it is. In Persona 1, Personas do not level up. Instead, they “rank up” a maximum of 8 times. Each rank up adds some stats and gives them a new spell. How fast they rank up is determined by their “affinity” stat - which means you always want high affinity as a lot of personas start out without any damage spells.

: Afancs are another very common enemy in the police station, and they are the worst thing we could possibly be fighting. They’re weak to ice, but have a skill called Water Wall that makes them absorb ice damage. This basically takes Maki out of the fight, though they’re weak to her handgun. They also resist wind, which makes Seimen Kongou borderline useless.

: The first floor is mostly just a loop around that save room across from where we came in.

: Upstairs, we run into what I believe is the last type of zombie enemy: the Zombie Cop. Like all zombies, they’re immune to gun damage, but Zombie Cops are extremely weak to most elemental attacks. Nanjo can actually be useful for once and instantly kill them with Hama, which in this game does light damage and has the added side effect of instantly killing undead enemies.

: The second floor is a little less straightforward. As soon as we leave the stairs, there’s two paths to take - that third one is a clear dead end.

: The left side is another dead end, but at least we know where the stairs are now.

: The right side has a save room at the midway point, and then leads us right to the stairs. Like the hospital, we basically just did a loop to get to the other side of the 1st floor.

: This time, all we have to do is walk right up to the door to the prison cells.

: “You won’t get away with this!”

: Brown is here somehow, and this is part of why the Snow Queen half of the game is only questionably canon. You’ll understand more once we leave the police station. It’s also kind of weird that Nanjo wouldn’t know that Brown was there, given that he was there when Mark got captured.
: “We should play nice for now and… huh?”

: “Huh? Hidehiko’s here too!”
: “Hah. A cage suits this monkey.”
: “Nanjo, you dickweed! What took you guys!? Wait a sec… Maki?”
: “Hey, it’s you guys. Ohh… I get it… you missed me that much, huh?”
: “Hey, Hidehiko? Why were you gonna play nice with us?”
: “Urgh…”
: “Most likely, he mistook us for someone else. Fortunately, we’re on your side. Isn’t that good to hear, Hidehiko?”
: “But tell me… why are you here, too? We thought only Masao had been detained.”

: “So I came here looking for some, but I ended up getting caught with Mark!”
: “Shuddup, Hidehiko! Just… shut up!”
: “Maki, why’re you here? It must’ve been a long trip. Are you feelin’ okay?”
: The manga beats you over the head with it almost immediately, but Mark is definitely attracted to Maki.
: “C’mon, Masao, why’re you joking around like that? I’m totally fine!”
: “S-so I see… Okay, then. Anyways --”

: “Look, Baldy, this is goin’ too damn far, even for a joke. I haven’t done anything!”
: “Wait… something’s wrong! Masao, they’re–”

: This is yet another one of those Persona awakening cutscene battles where we don’t do anything. Thankfully, this is the last one unless Reiji gets one.

: Just like in the hospital, it cycles through everyone using their Persona automatically to kill the four Zombie Cops surrounding whatever that other demon is. We don’t get to know what it is since it dies in a cutscene.

: Even though the sprites are blurry, what he’s doing is casting Bufu on Brown.

: “You too, eh, Hidehiko? But why him, of all people…?”
: “Alright, lemme explain it to you. Listen up…”

: Brown is a goddamn space cadet.
: “I don’t think he really gets it… oh well.”
: “Anyways, I’m comin’ too, Jihei. I’d be nervous for you guys if you were out on your own.”
: “We could say the same about you. You should leave the security card in Jihei’s care, Masao.”
: “Alright… here’s the security card, man. Better not lose that thing…”

: We’re not going to let Brown join, because doing that would stop Reiji from joining. This means we’re going to be stuck with four people for a while, which will make the game a little bit harder.

: The game really wants us to bring Brown along just to get the fifth party member, but if we don’t get Reiji we won’t see him at all.

: Just like SMT, the game makes us walk all the way back. Unlike the early SMT games, Traport isn’t a thing in Persona 1 as far as I know. There’s an item you can buy (at the cost of 10,000 yen, which is around 9 battles worth of cash) to instantly escape, but that’s about a quarter of our on-hand cash at this point.

: The real reason we want to not grind here is because of how bad the starter personas are. At rank 4, Seimen Kongou only knows a couple of status spells, which are not nearly as good in this game as they were in SMT 1 where charming a boss was basically a win condition.

: Maki gets Dia, the lowest-level healing spell. She also gets Posumudi, which is useless because I don’t think there are even any enemies at this point capable of poisoning us. Rapid Fire is hot garbage.

: Nanjo gets Hama and Fist of Fury, a physical skill (which costs SP and not HP in this game). Candy Voice is some status effect trash that I don’t use.

: Mark’s Persona is easily the worst skill-wise, because it only has physical skills and their range is godawful. Of all the characters, he’s the most likely to spend turns defending because he can’t do anything else until we get him a better Persona.

: Mark’s gun of choice is a combat shotgun, which is good in that it hits all enemies in range but also bad because of its attack pattern and low damage.

: My first thought was to go back to the Alaya Shrine to heal, since it’s free. However…

: There’s been some major changes to the map. St. Hermelin is no longer in existence - that’s because it’s currently busy being the setting for the Snow Queen quest. Maki will also refuse to let us go back to Alaya Shrine, so our only choice at this point is to push forward to the Abandoned Factory and SEBEC HQ.

: The good news, and the game never actually tells us this, is that we can now visit the Velvet Room. Naturally, this also means…

: I’d just like to talk about this music a bit. The Velvet Room song goes by the same name in all of the Persona games, and is pretty much the one musical constant between all of the games. It was changed slightly in Persona 3, but is largely the same song it’s always been. Persona 1, however, gives more context as to why it sounds the way it does - namely that Igor has a pianist and a singer on hire. They even get names in Persona 2: the singer is Belladonna and the pianist is Nameless.
: Sadly, though, it’s unlikely that they’ll continue to use Poem for Everyone’s Souls in the inevitable Persona 6, as Igor’s Japanese VA died several years ago and Atlus will probably replace him with a different character.

: Unlike the later installments, Personas in this game have to be equipped twice. The first time adds them to a character’s Persona list, and the second time actually equips them as the active Persona. One major upgrade over SMT is the addition of Guided Fusion mode.

: This is Normal Fusion mode, which tells us which Spell Cards we have will fuse. Unlike the later games, we don’t fuse Personas but instead fuse Spell Cards. There’s also no Compendium to re-summon a lost Persona.
: Persona 1 simplifies a lot of things over the mainline SMT games. Fusing two demons of the same family (Grave with Grave for instance) used to produce an elemental that could then be fused with another demon to get a demon one tier higher. P1 got rid of that. I’m not entirely sure what all the arrows mean, but I’ll look them up at some point.

: Guided Fusion mode works in reverse, telling us what Personas we can make using the cards we have. At this point, I think the main character was Persona Level 10, so there wasn’t much I could make. So I did a little grinding and made this. Interestingly enough, the main character in the Persona 1 manga actually uses Airgetlam at one point so even though there’s no official artwork for him in P1, I can still make a Personalog entry.

: Airgetlam is a pretty solid early-game Persona. His resists are much better than Seimen Kongou’s, as are his stats. Earth damage isn’t really better than Wind, but it’s still damage.

: For Maki, I went ahead and made Ame no Uzume, who isn’t all that much better than her starting Persona except she has better skills…

: Also, those fucking resistances! Ame no Uzume gives no fucks about magic, and is weak to three out of the eight physical damage types. The only thing to worry about is Curse, but by the time that shows up we’ll have moved on.

: Nanjo doesn’t have any really great options for a few more levels, so I got him a Jack Frost because even that’s less bad than his starting Persona.

You might notice that I didn’t get Mark one: that’s because Mark doesn’t really get any Personas with good or best affinity until Level 17. Next time, we’ll go to the Abandoned Factory and start busting up SEBEC.

[Mraagvpeine]

I don’t remember where I heard this, but doesn’t the Velvet Room have more than one song playing?

[SpammyV]

Hold up.

Like all zombies, they’re immune to gun damage

That’s not what The Zombie Survival Guide says!

[Timrod]

I don’t remember where I heard this, but doesn’t the Velvet Room have more than one song playing?

I honestly wouldn’t know, since when I did my first run I was doing the Snow Queen quest in a way that you basically never wind up changing Personas more than once. On the SEBEC route I’ll probably hear if it there’s more than one, but you might be thinking of the Persona 2 duology.

I’m fairly certain that it’s implied that Brown, Yuka, and Elly have all played the Persona game before and encountered the weird apparition, and possibly Philemon. They just haven’t gotten their Personas until now. It’s why Brown was so adamant that Mark was doing something wrong during the opening sequence.

The manga (which I hadn’t read before) goes into it as saying that they did, but that nothing happened other than the walls vibrating a bit. I had some time to read through parts of it (just up to the end of the hospital) over the weekend.

Man, Maki is… way more obvious about what is going on when the translation isn’t shitty.

I’ve never actually played Revelations: Persona. I never had a PS1 and when I tried buying one years later I went through like five of them and none had working disc drives. I can imagine it’s really confusing though, given that nothing the translators for that did made any sense.

That’s not what The Zombie Survival Guide says!

Weirdly, Persona 1 is the only Megami Tensei game with zombies that are immune to guns. They’re not immune in SMT 1 (though they do resist it by half) and they’re neutral against it in SMT 4 and SMT 4 Apocalypse. The reason for this is that rather than give every enemy unique resistances, Atlus did this thing where they gave all demons of the same type the same resistances. This is also largely true for the Personas, who share most of their resistances by arcana. This can and will be abused heavily when we get to the Snow Queen parts.

[LaZodiac]

I’ve never actually played Revelations: Persona. I never had a PS1 and when I tried buying one years later I went through like five of them and none had working disc drives. I can imagine it’s really confusing though, given that nothing the translators for that did made any sense.

I recently watched someone play through it so I might be biased, but the PS1 version, while hard to follow, did get things across. It just got them across less overtly obvious.

[Timrod]

Okay, so, uh… I think I need a vote on this, because I basically did the Persona 1 equivalent of winning the lottery in a way that will basically cause us to destroy the hell out of everything in the SEBEC building. First, I should probably explain how it happened.

So, when you fuse a Persona in the Velvet Room, you’re given the option to give the Persona an item. This is mostly used for one specific purpose that we’ll see much later in the LP - you can find tablets that have specific spells on them (usually the high-end attack spells) and give them to a Persona to cause them to learn that spell. There is a way we could do this at the point we’re at in the game, but it would require hours of intentional grinding.

I wasn’t really sure how this system worked, so I gave the three Personas we made last update a Life Stone just to see what would happen. I didn’t think anything would. As it turns out though…

Giving a Persona a consumable item has a chance of teaching them a random skill from a list that they are capable of learning. There’s certain limitations to this - as an example, the Jack Frost we made couldn’t inherit any fire spells because he’s an ice-based Persona. Now, normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, except…

While fighting a random battle in between the Velvet Room and the Abandoned Factory, our Airgetlam learned Mabufudyne, the highest tier of ice spell that attacks all enemies and also has a chance to force them to miss a turn. This was purely by chance: while you can theoretically farm for this by reloading the save file over and over, this just happened. So, how big of a deal is this?

Mabufudyne has such a high damage multiplier on it that it does roughly four times the damage Nanjo or Maki’s Personas can do. The numbers are blurry, but those hits are for 287, 288, and 127 (and that’s only because the enemy resists ice by half).

I have a save from before Airgetlam learned the spell, and if I reload the game from there it probably won’t happen again. I also have a save I made after it learned the spell. My concern here is that this isn’t necessarily a genuine experience: while we could have grinded the casino for a Mabufudyne tablet, most players aren’t going to do that on their first run.

So what I’m going to do is put up a poll, since the next update probably won’t be up until the weekend anyway.

Keep Mabufudyne?

• Luck happens, keep Airgetlam as is, wreck the SEBEC building.
• Having an extremely lucky event occur is not a genuine experience for most players. Reload the old save. Whatever happens from there happens.
• Keep Airgetlam as is, do not use Mabufudyne.

[LaZodiac]

Look the SMT series is one that basically just fucks you at every opportunity.

We take dungeon 2 era Mabufudyne and we ram ice cubes down their corporate throats.

[CommanderKeene]

Aram Jabbari, former CEO of Atlus USA, is famously quoted as saying “we get off on your tears.”

Well, turnabout is fair play, bitch. Make this game beg for mercy.

[Timrod]

: The thread has spoken, and we’re abusing Airgetlam. This turned out to be both a blessing and a curse.

: “Hey, didn’t Masao say he drew this? It’s really good! He’s pretty talented.”
: “Hold on a moment. You… came here often, yes?”
: “Hell yeah! This place is like a studio for my buds in the Tailors.”
: “So you used this place as a hideout… and never noticed SEBEC’s involvement?”
: “Shuddup! It’s like, you know, how stuff under your head is hard to notice!”
: “That’s ‘under your nose,’ you dunce!”
: Mark is about to become the bane of my existence. You’ll see why.
: “Ahahaha! C’mon, that’s enough… let’s find the entrance.”

: “Yuka!? What happened to the school? What happened to Yuko and everyone? Did you run away by yourself!?”
: “How should I know!? Like I have any idea what’s going on…”
: “Calm down, Maki. The school most likely vanished due to the Deva System’s effects.”
: “In which case, our best course of action is to make Kandori undo it.”
: “I’m coming with you! if I stay here, I’ll be totally hosed!”

: If we hadn’t gone through all the bullshit to get Reiji, and we hadn’t taken Brown for some reason, Ayase would force herself into the party at this point. Given that she sucks and I hate her, this would be a bad thing.

: We definitely do not want her, and it’s actually a really good thing we don’t take her or Brown. I’ll explain as soon as we get into the building.

: “Well, fine, assholes! Go to hell!”
: It just sucks that you have to take Ayase during the Snow Queen quest.
: “I feel kinda sorry for Yuka…”

: The card reader is right up these stairs, which are admittedly kind of hard to notice.

: “Huh! Man, so that’s where it was!”
: “What’s the matter?”
: “Jihei found the machine we’re supposed to use the card on. C’mon, let’s give it a try.”
: “Wait. We don’t know what will happen. Let’s think this through–”
: “Man, whatever. C’mon, fork it over.”

: It’s hard to see, but what happens is that a section of the ground opens up and then the elevator appears and extends the guard rails, because SEBEC isn’t trying very hard not to be Umbrella Corp.
: “Huh, so this is what it’s like inside. Isn’t this exciting!?”
: “Masao! Are you TRYING to kill me!?”
: “Hahahaha, sorry, man. (Tch… guess he won’t go down that easy…)”

: “Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
: “Well then, Jihei, let’s go.”

: Here we are at the Underground Passage.

: The enemies in the entry area are mostly the same as the ones on the street or in the police station. A single Mabufudyne will wipe them out. This, however, is where I started regretting not grinding enough to get Mark a new Persona.

: Most of the walls down here are made of giant shipping containers with the SEBEC logo on them. This area is far more maze-like than the police station or the hospital were. I should mention that SEBEC apparently stands for “Saeki Electronics & Biological & Energy Corporation”, which is basically a fancy way of saying Umbrella.

: The left route from the entry corridor puts us at a save room, and the right is a dead end.

: So anyway, here’s why Mark quickly became the bane of my existence. By this point, the MC has Mabufudyne and Nanjo has Mabufu (a lower-tier equivalent of Mabufudyne that also hits all enemies) so both of them have multi-target damage spells. Maki has Garu (single-target wind) and Agi (single-target fire). Mark has… two physical skills that can’t hit shit, and Gry, which almost nothing is weak to on top of his magic stat being trash because of his starter Persona.

: This problem is compounded by the fact that I’ve been dumping all of Jihei’s stat points into Agility, because moving fast in this game is how you pump out damage. At this point, Jihei gets almost two actions to everyone else’s one. Mark, on the other hand, is by far the slowest party member. Since EXP is split up by how much damage each character did and how many last hits they got, Mark is usually going to be behind unless I purposely set shit up for him.

: Here’s a new enemy, Fuji Musume. They’re one of the reasons I’m very glad we got Mabufudyne: they have 75% resistance against all types of magic… and also reflect gun damage. Airgetlam gives zero fucks about this because Mabufudyne does so much damage that it can kill them in two hits. I grab one of their spell cards… which is also going to be a problem as we move on.

: Just north of the save room is a weird red blip on the map. I wonder what that could be?

: I’m not even sure what this lever does, but I pulled it anyway. So anyway, spell cards. The problem is that negotiations are based off the level of the character who finishes the negotiation. This means that if we need Mark or Maki (Nanjo is doing pretty okay comparatively) to talk to a demon, we’re in trouble because their Persona Level is way lower than Jihei’s is - and this is without using Mabufudyne to end fights.

: There’s a second switch a bit north of the first one, which I also pull because why not?

: The stairs going up are a bit to the south and west of where we pulled that second switch.

: On the way there, however, we run into another new enemy type: Nightmares. Any enemy with the “Night” designator is going to suck because they absorb magic. As in all of it. These guys were absolute dicks in SMT 1, where they’d spam Shibaboo at you to inflict bind and could potentially end your game if you got unlucky. In this game, they merely spam you with debuffs that stop you from using physical attacks, which are their only weakness.

: Fortunately, Maki is just high enough level at this point to negotiate with them. Also, you’ve got it wrong there: Ayase’s the ho, Maki’s just dumb.

: We’re now in the SEBEC building proper, so I’m going to post a map I didn’t find until I had already gone all over the place.

[Image Credit: http://kouryakutsushin.com/persona/ ]
: We came in on 1F, where the pink kanji are.

: And naturally, we run into one of the most annoying enemy types in the building. Meet the Secret Police, who in the PS1 Japanese version were outright stated to be the U.S. Secret Service… because of course America always has to be the enemy in any SMT game. While they don’t have any listed resistances, they seem to take way less damage from everything than demons do.

: They also managed to gun down Maki before I could spam enough Mabufudynes to finish them off. This is why I am very thankful we got that.

: We also run into the Gremlin, which is apparently what the prison warden was. I grab their spell card as well.

: Anyway, of the three rooms we saw on the minimap, one is a save room. The second is Trish’s Spring, which is a source of healing. Trish is basically a running joke in the early Persona series: she charges something like double or triple what the healer in the mall does. She’s also pointless, because…

: The other room is the General Store, run by what I can only assume is a much younger Frank Reynolds during his days at the nitwit school. We had a massive load of money, so I bought a bunch of cheap Medicines and Chewing Souls (SP recovery) and a single Emergency Exit.

: Just up ahead is the elevator. Most guides recommend simply skipping the first four floors unless you really want the items inside… and somehow I managed to explore them and not find the items during recording. So instead, let me talk about the progress we made and also how I had to grind during the time I was floundering around during recording.

: A common encounter here are these Moh Shuvuu and the basic Angel - and given how when I ran SMT1 I was in constant want of angels I figured I’d try to get one. Here’s where Maki being slow sucks: she’s only level 13 here, and she’s also the only person who can negotiate with either one of these demons.

: I’m going to cut out some 40 minutes of me bumbling around the other four floors. Once we reach the 5th floor, there’s a staircase that we can use to access the other half of the building.

: That first door on the right is a Velvet Room, which I took because I figured that Mark needed a new Persona even if it wasn’t the best one he could have.

: I decided on fusing Mokosh. Mokosh kinda sucks, especially given that her Agility is abysmal, but her stats are overall higher and she has good elemental coverage: Gry is gravity damage, Zio is electric with a chance to shock (which I think this game only makes enemies slower) and Zan is Force damage. I’m not going to do a Personalog thing for Mokosh simply because she has no official artwork: this and one of the shitty Devil Kids games are the only things she’s ever been in. She’s a minor Slavic goddess associated with weaving.

: And of course we have a fusion accident. Fusion accidents are usually a good (or at least okay) thing, but in this case…

: They reduced all of Mokosh’s stats by 5, rendering her somehow worse than Mark’s starting Persona despite being a full 10 levels higher. Fortunately, I already have a Quetzalcoatl fused for when Mark hits 17.

: More new enemies: Pyro Jack in the front and Cockatrices in the back. I’m grabbing spell cards left and right.

: There are also Agents, who are just Secret Police with slightly better stats and also a hat.

: And Nue, who I wasn’t able to grab a card from because I kept screwing up the negotiation somehow.

: Finally, there was this sequence, with Yakuza… who are apparently demons now. So how do we negotiate with them?

: We simply have Mark gaze longingly into their eyes until they give us a spell card.

: So now that I had the map, I wanted to go back and get the items I knew were on the earlier floors. This room on 2F is right next to the elevator.

: The sprites are a little blurry (blame the PSP’s output) but there’s three items in this room. Can YOU find them? I sure as hell couldn’t.

: The answer is that they’re in lockers hidden along this wall.

: The first room here has a couple of Spectra Vests, a Glock 26 for Maki, and a Shot Shells ammo item. Guns are pretty useless in this game and the Spectra Vests are only a mild improvement over what we’ve already got.

: This is the second room on the second floor, which has nothing good in it - there’s a Scorpion Whip for Ayase (who we don’t have) and a totem item called a Flame Shawl that would allow us to fuse a specific Persona that’s already completely obsolete. By the time I reached the end of this recording, the party was pretty overlevelled. This pattern pretty much repeats itself, except for one room on… I think the fourth floor?

: Welcome to the third most dickish mechanic in Persona 1: trapped chests. These are a holdover from the early SMT games, and the worst part is that some of them have items in them. Fortunately, the traps are fairly minor: they hit for a bit of damage or a status effect or something.

: The scientist in this room also confirms that the SEBEC building is not normally a non-Euclidean shitfest, it’s the DEVA system doing it.

: The only other room that’s of any importance item-wise is on floor five, which has a Mossberg shotgun for Mark and some more Shot Shells, which boost gun damage pretty high over the 9mm Parabellums we started with but still not enough that we want to use anything but spells for damage.

: Back in the Velvet Room on the back side of the fourth floor, I fused a Fuutai for Maki and a Quetzalcoatl for Mark. Most guides recommend putting Quetzalcoatl on Nanjo, but he’s honestly kind of a garbage Persona in this game. Unfortunately, I can’t do a Personalog thing for Fuutai because he’s so obscure that people on the Megami Tensei wiki can’t agree where he’s even from, apart from somewhere vaguely Chinese. In any case, Fuutai only shows up in Persona 1.

: Quetzalcoatl is honestly kind of a trash Persona: he’s weak to every single element type across the board and also still really slow. The only reason we even want him is because he’s got better stats than Mark’s starting Persona.

: Jihei levelled up to 20 just outside of the Velvet Room, and has his Agility halfway maxed. This makes him not only the fastest person in the party by far, but also gives him the highest defense.

: The stairs down to the back side of the third floor are pretty much right next to where you enter the back side of the fourth floor from.

: At this point, I was running or negotiating my way out of combat just because I’d had enough. Encounters were only giving a tiny fraction of the EXP we’d need to level at this point.

: You can probably guess what these three rooms are, but they’re a save point, a heal point, and a general store respectively. We had so much money that I was able to max out on recovery items and still had over a hundred thousand yen left over.

: So now that we’re on the bottom floor again, what do we do? We get to go through a carbon copy of this staircase four times to go back up to the top floor. As much as Atlus was trying to make Persona 1 a game that didn’t hate you for playing it the way the SNES games did, I feel like they didn’t entirely succeed.

: I screencapped it somewhere, but there’s a scientist in the building who will mention a fifth St. Hermelin student getting into the building.

: If you’ve read any of the Persona 1 manga, you probably know that the manga reveals Kandori WAY earlier than this: he actually shows up before the protagonist even gets to Mikage Hospital.
: “I see you haven’t changed, Kandori. You’re like an ass in a lion’s skin.”
: “Pushing your luck, aren’t you? Does President Saeki know about this?”
: “My, my. The young master of the Nanjo group. No, the old man knows nothing.”
: “But this is preposterous… your mother would spank you if she knew you had stooped to breaking and entering. Or is that your senile butler’s job?”
: “Silence! You… don’t think I’ll easily forgive this!”
: “Yo, quit grandstandin’, man. You’re gonna pay for what you did!”
: I feel like Kandori really should just give up here, given that he’s surrounded by anime teenagers with Jojo powers.
: “This guy’s… Kandori?”

: “All right, don’t let a single one of them escape!”

: “What a surprise. I didn’t expect that you’d be Persona-users as well.”
: “What!? Don’t tell me… you too!?”

: And just like that, we’re forced to eat a Maragi before we can even move. It does about 25 damage to everyone.
: “Takeda, I leave this to you. You can handle a few children, mm?”
: “You’re going nowhere!”
: “Oh no you don’t! Damn kids, you’re not taking one step outta here!”

: Here’s our boss battle: Takeda plus four Agents. This won’t be a problem - we’ve got Mabufudyne.

: There’s just one little problem. Takeda is weak to ice: he takes 2x damage from it… but as far as I can tell he’s got some kind of weird evasion bonus against multi-target spells. Still, ~75 damage to the Agents isn’t bad.

: Maki manages to pop Takeda with a Bufula (the second-tier ice spell behind Bufudyne) for about 90 damage. There’s only one minor problem…

: Takeda starts focusing on Maki hard, and I forgot that because she has Fuutai equipped, we have no healer.

: She then dies before I can switch back to Ame no Uzume and start healing. This wasn’t a big deal because I found a Revive Bead off a random encounter and got her back up.

: Takeda’s weird protection against multi-target spells seems to wear off as soon as the Agents die, so now we can hit him with Mabufudyne for 140-150 damage. Takeda does have a Persona, by the way, but it’s never mentioned what it is.

: We’re overlevelled at this point, but that’s a good thing for one reason: we still haven’t recruited Reiji yet. Reiji will join the party at Jihei’s level - and Jihei is already level 21.

: This means we could, in fact, fuse the most stupidly broken Persona in this game. I’ll do that next time we can hit a Velvet Room.

: “There’s no sign he used the door. There must be another way out!”
: “…That’s Kandori, huh…? Where have I…?”
: “Hm? Wassup, Maki? You look all down.”

: Before we find the hidden way out of here, we want to stop at this door-looking thing, which has a sword for Nanjo.

: The button is behind the desk, because of course it is.

: Next time, we’ll find the DEVA system and fuse a broken-ass Persona that I may or may not actually wind up using.

(Edit)

: I realized I forgot to link to the music, because that was something I wanted to talk about and then just forgot about. The SEBEC building actually has two different themes: one that was in the original PS1 release and a second one that was done for the PSP remake.

: I’m not entirely sure why they replaced the music. Some people theorize that it had to do with re-branding Persona 1 for an audience that was used to the later game, while others think it’s because Atlus did it out of respect for the original composer, who apparently died in 2002. In any case, most people seem to like the PS1 version better and it’s kind of a wonder to me that no one has made a hack that restores the original soundtrack to the PSP release.

: Then you’ve got this one, which plays during the fight with Takeda. Bloody Destiny is another replacement song, and the reason for this one is more obvious: the PS1 version used what was basically a remix of Shin Megami Tensei II’s boss fight theme. Like A Lone Prayer and the overworld theme, Bloody Destiny has incomprehensible lyrics.

[CommanderKeene]

Yeah, one of the reasons that I dislike actually playing P1 is that exp is tied to either the amount of damage you deal or the number of enemies you kill, which means that even with moderate investment in Agility Jay will be far and away the best party member due to getting more exp than everyone else. Mark ends up the lowest-leveled, because he’s slow as a rock and has terrible starting attacks. IME playing this game though, Maki was better off than Nanjo, but maybe that’s just the way the dice fell or something.

[Timrod]

It’s definitely tied to damage, which is why Jihei has such a huge advantage: having Mabufudyne that early caused him to become the party’s number one damage dealer by a mile. The gap narrows a bit in the next update because I tried to avoid a lot of the more annoying fights, but at least Mark gets to be useful.

[Timrod]

: Welcome back to Persona 1. After we kick Takeda’s ass, we get put in a tiny corridor with an elevator that goes to the basement. I honestly would’ve covered this last update, but I assumed there was another shitfest of a dungeon beyond this point.

: The hallway down here has a save room and then a warehouse area with some items in it. Two of the chests are trapped, and it’s kind of hilarious because…

: You can use the medicine to more than heal the damage from the two boxes. There’s nothing great in them apart from a Turquoise, which works very similar to the way it did in Shin Megami Tensei 1. You can trade gems in for items, fuse them to get stat boosting incenses, or use them in Persona fusion to boost certain kinds of Personas.

: Mark has a strange premonition in this room. We’ll see if that comes true or not.

: Going out the back of the warehouse brings us to a hallway on the other side. Interestingly, Atlus went and made a different walking sound for walking on metal floors.

: There’s a lab with some scientists in it who don’t have much interesting to say, and then a hallway leading East.

: Oh boy, a dark room! Remember how everyone loved those in the SNES SMT games? At least with this game, Atlus was nice enough to automap the route you’ve taken through it - something they took away in the later SMT games.

: There’s also a new enemy type in this area, which I grab a card from.

: Persona 1 doesn’t have voiceacting, but I read absolutely everything Dr. Nicholai says in Otacon/Huey’s voice.

: “Preposterous. It’s the rest of mankind that must atone. What I’ve done here is nothing more than to facilitate that process.”

: “I won’t allow anyone to stand in my way. Not even a child. Judgment will come regardless. It’s only a question of sooner, or later.”
: “You’re not goin’ anywhere, mister!”
: “Ah… I had a feeling you’d come. So you beat Takeda? He always was useless.”
: “Your time has come, Kandori!”
: “Loud noises from young children… I don’t have time for you. I have matters to attend to… come, Dr. Nicholai.”

: I can’t tell if Kandori is supposed to be holding Dr. Nicholai at gunpoint, and this is kind of why I wish they’d remake Persona 1 with actual graphics as opposed to whatever this trash is. Seriously, the SNES games had better quality sprites.

: “Wait!”
: “So this is the Deva System. What are Kandori’s plans for this?”
: “This machine… I… where do I know this thing from?”
RUMBLING

: What we’re about to do is not going to make any sense, given that if we just left the goddamn giant nuke machine alone Kandori would die, and I don’t think you can really come back from being half blasted into your component atoms anyway.

: “Let’s save him! There’s no need for the old guy to die just 'cause of Kandori!”
: “We’ll smack down Kandori ourselves! What’s what we came for, isn’t it!?”
: “Wait! The old man must have invented the system. He’s taking responsibility… we should respect his wishes. We don’t even know how to stop the machine.”
: Yeah we do, it’s the button labelled “THOR’S HAMMER” with the big nuclear trefoil on it.
: “Jihei! Here, this’ll stop the machine! The blue button increases the output… but the red button is the emergency stop! If you push it, we can save him!”
: I really don’t understand why they think they can save Nicholai from being torn apart when he’s already being torn apart, but whatever. Stupidity is kind of par for the course for Atlus protagonists.
: “Maki…? Where did you learn that!?”
: “I don’t know how I know, I just know! Jihei! Hurry!”

: “We can catch Kandori anytime. This man needs our help!”
: “I’ve had enough! I don’t want any more deaths… no one wants to die, right?”

: Even though the correct thing to do would have been to press the blue button the second Kandori got in the machine, we have to press the red button because Persona hates both Chaos and Neutral.

: Meet the worst character in the game. No, seriously.
: “Heh… Heheh… hahaha! I refuse to die! Now… take me to your world!”
: “Whoa! Wh-what the!?”

: “Maki! A-are you okay?”
: “…Nggh…Ma…sao?”
: “Ungh… where am I…? Oh, Jihei. You’re all right. Looks like everyone’s unhurt. We certainly have the devil’s luck.”

: “Oh… where am I? Ah, Jihei. Are you hurt anywhere?”

: “Owww… my hip…”

: "Y-Yes! We’re alive, Jay! Go me! I’m the luckiest!’

: “…Urrrgh. Oww! I’ve had it! I’m going home! Like, why is this happening to me!?”

: If you have a fifth party member who isn’t Reiji, they’ll say something instead of Mark.

: “…This is our school’s gym. But it’s the one from six months ago…”

: “Hey… is this the gym!? But it’s the old one from six months ago…”

: “Hey, uh… this is the gym, right? Didn’t they tear this one down six months ago…?”

: “I get it… we’ve gone back…”
: “Gone back? To six months ago!? C’mon, Maki, snap out of it!”
: “You mean a time slip? That’s rather different than what your mother said.”
: “I’ve told you before, I don’t have a real mom. I never thought the stuff Yosuke was saying was… actually true…”

: “No way! Th-that’s impossible! Yosuke!”
: “H-Hey, Maki!”

: “Could this “Yosuke” be Yosuke Naito? As I recall, he went missing along with Chisato Kasai roughly two months ago.”

: Everyone else pretty much says the exact same thing, so I’m not going to bother making you read it three times.

: “…That dolt. I can’t believe she took off on her own at a time like this. Come, Jihei. We’d better go after Maki.”

: Future Timrod here. The script doesn’t tell me what the deal with this part is, but I’m 99% sure it only happens if you have a fifth party member at this point. If it did happen in this run, I totally missed it. It’s technically optional dialogue, however I’m counting it as alt. party member dialogue because it doesn’t happen on this route.

: “…Jihei. Don’t you think Maki is acting oddly for an amnesia victim? Is this really six months ago? That girl did come here looking for Maki… but Maki was hospitalized six months ago as well.”

: “A time slip… do you think it’s true, Jihei? Something tells me that isn’t the case here.”

: I don’t know why, but I feel like this is meant to be a reference to The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which most people remember from the 2006 anime movie, but which was written in the early 80s and had a live-action TV version made in 1994, two years before this game released in Japan. Something tells me Elly’s probably read it.

: “Is this place really our school? Doesn’t it look like somewhere else? Oh, duh! It’s all a dream! Of course! Hahaha…”

: " ‘Time Strip’? Is that what they’re calling it now? Aww, this sucks! Am I behind the times on the latest trends?"

: I honestly feel like if we just dropped Nanjo and Mark from the party entirely, there wouldn’t be much of a difference.

: The gym leads back to the incinerator where we left the school on our way to the police station. This is part of why I hate the girl in black, because they don’t even try to hide the dumbass plot twist with her. Seriously, once you learn what it is you’ll understand why I think the SEBEC route is not well-written.

: Future Timrod update: the SEBEC route is actually well-written, it’s just that pretty much everything up to near the end of the game is kind of dull.

: Everything else in the school is pretty much just the way we left it. There’s two optional cutscenes here, and I wound up hitting both of them looking for where the hell we’re supposed to go.

: “Oooh, it’s Nurse Natsumi!”

: “Ah, Ms. Saeko. It feels as though we haven’t seen you in a while.”
: “…”
: “She’s… she’s all depressed!”
: Well, that’s certainly strange. There’s going to be a lot of inconsistencies between the past and the present, and this is one of them. The other is in the principal’s office, just down the hall.

: This is, in fact, the first time you can meet the principal. I actually wandered into her office looking for the teacher’s lounge when we were still doing all the Reiji bullshit, and it’s empty at the start of the game. Said bullshit is about to pay off real soon, by the way.
: “No, that’s not in. But who’s this girl in black you mentioned…?”
: God dammit Nanjo, it’s the one you just ran into who teleported you into the past and is also blatantly Maki’s shadow. This is starting to feel like the start of Persona 4 with how dense everyone is.

: Gee, it’s almost like someone stole his heart. You know, if you put a mask on Jihei you’d basically have Joker.
: “Whoa… there are demons over here, too?”

: “Wh-what the hell!? Why’s Hamya being so nice to us? U-um… we gotta go!”

: I don’t know how you’re supposed to find this out other than trial and error, but the place we want to go is classroom 2-5. On a side note, you definitely want to make sure you save before you do this.

: “I didn’t think I’d see people from the original world here!”
: Wait… what?

: “What? Oh, don’t tell me… are you Yosuke Naito? The guy who went missing?”
: “Yeah, that’s me! About two months ago, Chisato… she and I wandered into this world. I’m from the same place you are!”
: “You said ‘this world’. Then this isn’t the past, but another dimension, or another world, yes?”
: “Yeah, I thought it was the past too, at first. Everything here is exactly the same as it was a year ago. Some things are weird, though… the police station turned into a forest, and the hospital is a castle…”
: “And Maki there was just like you see her. Yeah… it was practically a paradise, until last month.”

: “Seriously? We thought you ran off with Chisato, but you were in another world?”
: “I want to say that’s completely nuts, but then again we’re in the same boat.”

: “This is fantastic! Oh, how marvelous! It’s just like in a novel!”

: Yeah, that last one was definitely a Girl Who Leapt Through Time reference.

: “Is this for real? Aww… I had plans for this weekend! What’re you gonna do about it, Jihei!?”

: “What!? Then how are we supposed to get back!? Sheesh…”

: “It’s hard to believe, but it isn’t out of the question for the Deva System…”
: “Yeah, I can see that… I didn’t think you’d bring back this world’s Maki, though.”
: “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re saying… Maki really is Maki, but not the one we know?”

: “I see… no wonder your words and actions seemed amiss…”
: “I was dozing off in class, and when I woke up I was in another world.”
: A world of twenty, twenty thousand girls? And milk, and rectangles, joint optometrist, the man with the golden eye…eyeball? God dammit this is going to turn into YIIK all over again.
: “I didn’t figure it out until much later.”

: “Couldn’t you have at least said something, uh…”
: “I’m sorry, I really am. But if I did mention it, would you have believed me?”
: Nah, I mean, everyone only had a dream involving a guy in a mask who gave them a Jojo stand and then watched as demons subsequently invaded Japan for the fourth time. Nobody would ever believe that.
: “I just thought if we beat Kandori, both worlds would go back to normal… that’s why I figured I’d wait until it was all over to tell you…”

: “There’s no mistaking that voice… it’s that girl! Did she say she removed the exits!? If demons show up now, we’ll be slaughtered!”
: “Dammit… I gotta go!”
: “Wait, Yosuke, don’t strain yourself! Everyone… give me a hand! We have to do something!”

: “Huh? My wounds? Oh… the last tiem that little girl was here, she kicked my ass. Man, talk about pathetic!”

: “Don’t let your guard down just because she’s a kid. She has strange powers…”

: “What sort of relationship does that girl have with Kandori? There’s just too little data to draw a useful conclusion…”

: “There’s no use sitting around and worrying over this! We gotta take action and find a way back home.”

: “A girl who controls demons… sounds like a Devil Summoner to me…”

: Elly is making a blatant reference to Atlus’s last game, SMT Devil Summoner on the Saturn. Unfortunately, it’s never been translated, though there is an LP of it on the archive. Persona 1 is actually a huge leap in game design over Devil Summoner, which had things like teleporter mazes that you had to walk through backwards.

: “Oh man, you think there really is a way to go back?”

: “Jihei! You better find a way back!”

: Weirdly enough, there’s also a line in the script here for Reiji… who we haven’t even met yet. I think this is for if you come back to this room after recruiting him - which we’ll do momentarily.

: “Kandori’s kid, maybe? I hate to think of that bastard having kids…”

: Oh boy, some gameplay after only like thirty minutes of solid cutscene!

: The school is now as fucked up as the SEBEC building was, and is in fact a teleporter maze now. This is less dickish than SMT 1 because in SMT 1, there’d also be damage floors everywhere and missable items.

: Right away, we get into a random encounter with… oh fuck. That’s not good. The two things in the back are Rusalkas, which have been a mainstay since SMT 1.

: There’s also Gandharva, a series mainstay along with his wife, Apsaras. In fact, this entire encounter contains nothing but demons who are in almost every game in the series. However, the real worrisome thing here is right in the front and center: Lilim. Remember how I said we were going to fuse a bullshit overpowered Persona? SHE’S IT. While we don’t need Demon Lilim to make Persona Lilim, she’s bad news. Let me just get the Personalog entry out of the way so you can understand why. We also can’t negotiate with her because only Maki can do that and Maki isn’t high enough level.

: Future Timrod update: You’re going to see me say this a lot, that we can’t negotiate with something because we aren’t a high enough level. At some point, I realize that negotiations are based off of the average level of the party rather than the level of the person negotiating.

: Not only does Lilim absorb all elements except for Expel and Miracle (both extremely rare to see) but she also reflects all status effects. Many people consider using Lilim to be cheesing the game, because it is entirely possible to make it through the game with just her. Needless to say, we will be fusing her immediately. Her stats as an enemy are slightly lower. The only problem is that her spells are expensive at 21 SP and she also doesn’t learn any really good moves. We can fix that.

: It’s better to negotiate your way out of any Lilim fights, because right now our physical attacks (which are Lilim’s only weakness) don’t do enough damage.

: I had to grind just a little bit to get Jihei’s persona level to 21. Another reason Lilim is so overpowered is that you can actually fuse her using only cards from Mikage Hospital.

: We had a couple of enemies drop stones, which automatically add a skill to a fused Persona. We could use Mamagna (earth damage) but we want to use Maragi (fire damage) because most of the enemies we’re going to run into in the school are going to be weak to fire.

: I also wanted to fuse a new Persona for Mark, so I made him one of these without knowing that he canonically gets one in the manga. Personalog time!

: You know, Gozu-Tennoh has a really impressive resume but I bet he still can’t get HR to look at it. Strangely, he was nerfed from the PS1 release - the lower MAtk number and higher SP cost were added in the PSP version. The important thing here is Toxic Sting, which does a metric assload of Tech damage (as opposed to Rush damage, the other damage type used for most physical Persona skills). The only bad part about him is that in Persona 1, Megido is nuclear damage rather than being non-elemental.

: Gozu-Tennoh also allows us to destroy Lilim: it hits for some 500 damage against her and is enough for an instant kill (the 112 you see there was layered on like four other hits for 100+ damage).

: After a quick stop at the Velvet Room (it’s the one on the right edge of the screen, the other room behind us is the nurse’s office) we can get going on this godawful teleporter maze.

: You’ll notice that there are doors on the north wall here that don’t seem to go anywhere. That’s because these are teleporters. The teleporter maze here is mercifully simple: there’s only four rooms of it and it’s pretty straightforward. Either of these doors on the minimap will work.

: The second floor has a different set of encounters. Most of the ones with Lilim are on the first floor, strangely enough. These thing are Yomotsu Shikome, which I grab a card from.

: There’s also these Dribblers, who are basketballs possessed by ghosts. Dribblers are extremely weak to fire.

: There’s admittedly not much of a point grabbing all these spell cards, because most of them can only fuse into Personas way above our fusion limit. I do it anyway just because.

: Going up the left side from the first teleporter exit reveals a bunch of dead ends and a room I didn’t bother checking out because I was pretty sure it’d just teleport me back out.

: Instead, we want to go to the east and all the way around to a staircase.

: Up the stairs is an encounter with a Stephen King reference, because of course there is. The third and fourth teleporter areas have a lot of encounters like this with single enemies way above our level. They’re not hard to take down, but we can’t negotiate with them. Carrie in particular is shit because she’s highly resistant to everything but one particular type of damage we don’t have yet - that being getting punched. I wonder who could do that?

: There’s also the Anatomy, which is another high-HP damage sponge. Unlike Carrie, he’s very weak to fire but has a pretty high magic defense.

: Once we’re up the stairs, we can immediately see which way is the wrong way. We want to go south, then… west I think?

: Anyway, we eventually arrive at this classroom. This classroom is deceiving: if we were to continue walking down the hallway, we’d fall into a pit and have to climb back up from the previous floor. Instead, we want to go inside, because inside…

: I’d like to imagine that Girl Under Attack is her actual name.

: Maki Bogard.

: "Yo, man! It’s dangerous! Step back!’
: “W-wait… are you… are you Reiji!?”

: You can probably guess what’s going to happen next. I’ll get the Personalog ready.

: As a side effect, we also get a free level up!

: “What? Then you can all…”
: “That seems to be the case. By the way, you appear to be the real Reiji.”
: “What’s that mean?”

: “This place isn’t your world. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
: “Kandori sent us here, to an alternate world. I take it you met the same fate. That scientist mentioned a young man sent through a dimensional rift… you, I presume? So why are you here, safe and sound? Why are you pursuing Kandori?”
: “…As I was drifting through a vast, empty space, a kid in white appeared… when I came to, I was here. That’s all… you don’t need to know the rest.”
: “A child wearing white?”
: “C’mon, drop the hotshot act. We’re gonna smack Kandori around and find a way back. You should come. I bet your mom’s worried about you.”

: “It’s decided, then! Nice to meet you, Reiji! I’m Maki Sonomura!”
: “…”
: “What, is something on my face? Oh, I get it! You were admiring me. Well, I am pretty cute! It’s only natural.”

: If we already have a fifth party member, this scene ends very differently.

: “Shut up! I got no reason to join your little crew. I’m playing this my way.”

: "What’s with that attitude!? Guess that’ll teach me to be worried about you! Fine. Do what you want. Like I give a damn if you wind up dead, idiot.

: “What’s with this guy? All I do is bring up his mom and he goes nuclear.”

: You haven’t seen it yet (or maybe you have) but not having Reiji makes a few scenes late in the game feel way less satisfying. It’s pretty clear that Reiji was meant to be the fifth party member.

: “Stop it, Masao! It’s useless… he’s got that look in his eyes. I’m sure Kandori hurt something precious to him, just like us…”

: “Something precious…?”

: That’s for if you have Elly. This next one is for Brown, which happens right after Mark’s last line.

: “Alright, no more questions! Everyone has things they hate to talk about, right?”

: “Are you ill, Hidehiko? That’s rather considerate, coming from you. You seem to be a man sensitive to others prying into his past, yes?”

: “Wh… what? Straight shooters like me are pretty rare, y’know? I wouldn’t be surprised if they named me as a national treasure someday!”

: “Perhaps I spoke too soon… Shall we be going, Jihei?”

: “Nanjo!? What’s up with that? See if you ever get to talk to a national treasure!”

: Finally, Ayase’s version.

: “Huuuuh? Is that what’s wrong with him? I thought he was just antisocial…”

: “Friends, maybe… or it could be his hopes for the future.”

: “Hopes for the future? Psh… Who cares about the future? I wanna have fun right now! What a dweeb…”

: I know this section is getting long, but there’s also a scene AFTER this that isn’t in Reiji’s route.

: “Reiji said a child wearing white rescued him, right? Could that have been Mai…? I’ve seen her several times, but she’s a very mysterious girl…”

: “Huh? Whaddaya mean, what’s got me so pissed off? Shuddup, dude!”

: “Leave him be. We’re after the same man, so we’re sure to see one another again. He can do what he wants so long as he doesn’t get in our way.”

: Just when you thought it was over, there’s also a bunch of optional lines that only happen if you haven’t recruited Reiji. When I first did this update, I said the game’s writing sucked. It’s really more that Reiji’s route is very minimalistic up until you get him, where the other fifth party members have plenty of dialogue the entire time. I still think Reiji’s route is the best, but there were definitely better ways they could’ve gone about doing it.

: “You’re asking me why Reiji is after Kandori? Mm… we’ll find out eventually. For now, it’s enough that our goals dovetail.”

: “Do you have someone precious to you?”

: If you answer no…

: “I see… I’m sorry to ask such an odd question, then.”

: But if you answer yes (as you should, because Elly is the best girl and for Jihei to wind up with anyone else would be objectively wrong, much like picking any girl that is not Yukiko in Persona 4):

: “I see… you’re like me, then…”

: “You must have stuff you’re hiding too, right?”

: “See? See? Am I right or am I right? That’s just how people are?” (This is for answering yes)

: "That’s a joke, right? Was our friendship that shallow…? (This is for answering no)

: "It’s no use worrying about what might happen, don’t you think, Jihei?

: “Thought so! You and me, like, think alike.”

: “…What!? That’s stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupid!”

: Ayase thinks she’s Anarchy Panty but she’s not.

: I went ahead and modified the formation so as to maximize damage output. Maki is far back because her bow and spells can hit pretty much anything. Reiji takes Nanjo’s spot up front because he’s basically Nanjo or Mark but better. Mark is only up front because most of his skills are short-range and also because he sucks.

: Once we exit out the other side of the classroom, there’s more new enemies.

: Nekomata is pretty generic, just like in the SNES games. Slightly weak to guns, but other than that not really notable.

: Bukimi, on the other hand, is this floor’s Lilim. They’re kind of hard to see because their true form is only revealed when they do one particular attack.

: Interestingly, they’re apparently a toilet ghost that manifests as a hand sticking out of a toilet and gives you toilet paper. They’re what that hand in the toilet man thing was based off of in Majora’s Mask.

: Bukimi has an attack like the Pretas did where they sacrifice themselves to cause massive fucking damage. How massive, you ask?

: Enough that I almost game overed after a single hit. Thankfully, Bukimi is flammable. I should mention that Lilim’s Maragi does more damage even to enemies not weak to fire than Airgetlam’s Mabufudyne did.

: “You better fix the school, or I’ll spank you 'til your butt swells up twice as big!”
: “No way, Jose! I don’t listen to anybody but my Daddy! Try and stop me, flatty!”
: “Flat --!? Oh, that does it! What a little brat!”
: “Cool it, Maki… she’s just a kid. You gotta have patience with --”
: Honestly, I feel like the SMT 1 and/or 2 protagonists would already have started pumping the little girl full of lead by this point.
: “Shuddup, monkeyboy! Ook ook, eek eek, it’s a monkeyboy!”
: “What did you call me, you spoiled brat!?”
: “Calm down, monkeyman.”
: “Nanjo, you jerk! You’re next!”

: And with that, the girl summons what is easily the worst boss in the game - not even because it’s hard, just because it sucks.

: “…You’d all better snap out of it, or it’ll be your funeral.”
: “Get them, Tesso!”

: Unlike a lot of the other enemies we’ve been fighting in the school (seriously, I want to know who thought ‘it’s a basketball only also a ghost’ was good enemy design), Tesso is an actual mythological figure - it’s a giant rat with metal teeth and claws that summons swarms of rats. Tesso also gets its own boss theme:

: Tesso represents the first major step-up in difficulty, though with Lilim it’s basically incapable of game overing you. It likes to spam Magry (group gravity damage) which is only really a problem for Nanjo and Maki. Reiji’s Persona resists it, and Lilim absorbs it.

: The star of the show here is actually Mark, because his Persona has a multi-hit physical attack that does Rush damage, one of the only things Tesso is actually weak to.

: When Tesso isn’t spamming Magry, it usually does a single-target gun attack that doesn’t really do a whole lot. I spent most of this fight on Auto with Jihei and Mark spamming Toxic Sting (multi-hit physical attack), Nanjo just kinda sitting there not doing a whole lot since his Persona does Nuclear damage and Tesso is immune, and Reiji using Eiha (single-target death damage) while Maki healed.

: “Daddy’s REAL strong! You guys won’t stand a chance!”
: “Hold it right there!”
: “Aww, she got away again!”
: “…Who is that girl…?”

: “Yosuke! Is everything all right!?”
: “Yeah! The school’s back to normal, thanks to you guys.”
: “Don’t worry about it.”
: “I really can’t thank you guys enough. By the way… I want you to meet someone. Would you mind coming with me?”
: “…Why?”
: “There’s a guy who’s helped me out since I came here. He actually believed me… he’s investigating the two worlds. Maybe he’s figured something out by now.”
: “Wow, I’m kinda surprised someone took you seriously. Who is this guy?”

: “Wanna go after him then, Reiji?”
: “…”

Next time, we’ll go see what’s changed in the Mikage-cho of this otherwordly hellscape, and hopefully put a bullet through Maki’s shadow.

[LaZodiac]

Atlus was nice enough to automap the route you’ve taken through it - something they took away in the later SMT games.

And this is why if anyone ever tells you to play Strange Journey, you pitch them into the sun.

You know between meeting Lucy, his persona actually having a unique design, and his dramatic personality, I think Reiji might be the only actual protagonist here beyond the MC.

[Timrod]

: Just a heads up, this update’s going to be short because the dungeon immediately after where this update is going to end is bad enough to rival some dungeons in SMT1.

: The library is on the third floor of St. Hermelin, a place where we largely had no reason to go before.

: Tsutomu is another one of those characters where we meet their alternate world counterpart but never meet the real one.
: “…Are you really Tsutomu? Dude… he’s talking like a normal person!”
: “Hm… the me on the other side must be an odd duck indeed. I’d like to meet him.”
: “Hmm. Then, visitors, let us get down to business.”
: Tsutomu is also one of those things where the character designer for P1 took a lot of really strange turns. He looks a lot more human and a lot less like a Gaian cultist in the manga.
: “We heard you’re investigating the two worlds. What are your thoughts thus far?”
: “The things in this world seem to be unrelated… but they are all connected by the strings of fate. The same holds true for the black door that suddenly appeared.”
: I think this might be some kind of localization error. What he’s talking about is the giant monolith looking thing that’s right behind him.
: “Only those who can draw on that strength may learn the truth. Unfortunately… that does not seem to be my role.”
: “Our coming here was inevitable. Which means… it’s on us to solve everything.”
: “I don’t know who spun the thread, but that’s a helpful way to think of it. Now, name this man you pursue who holds the string’s end.”

: There’s a very long pause between the two names. My guess is that it’s not intentional, but the result of changing the dialog boxes for English characters.
: “Hm. Exactly the name I expected. In truth, I knew beforehand that these incidents would occur… thanks to the prophecy of a certain monkey-suited gentleman at the shrine.”
: “Monkey-suited!? There’s nothing gentle about monkeys!”
: I really, really have no idea what any of that shit means. This whole thing feels like they never localized it properly.
: “Will someone shut this dumb ape up!?”
: “Look who’s talking, bib boy!”
: “…What a bunch of children.”

: “Shut up! Stop it, both of you!”

: “Haha! Ook ook!”

: “This ‘monkey-suited gentleman’ must be Mark’s uncle or something!”

: Tsutomu is, I believe, the only person to meet Philemon who does not subsequently get a Persona out of it. I don’t know why, because there’s a number of other very minor characters who do.

: We can also examine the door.

: “I’ve tried everything, but it won’t budge. Though if the threads of fate lead there, even this door must open.”

: It’s time to leave school and hit the streets of Mikage-cho once again. You’ll notice that there is now a giant stone wall cutting the city in half.

: The demons from St. Hermelin have now spilled onto the streets. Lilim and Maragi take care of them in short order. Unfortunately, Jihei is overlevelled at this point while Maki, Nanjo, and Mark are suffering due to having bad Personas and/or lacking area attacks. I kind of sort of fix this by the end of the update, but there’s still a major gap that makes it very hard for us to negotiate with certain demons.

: We can’t get to the Joy Street mall anymore, but we can get to the Mikage Sun Mall, which is largely the same as it was in the real world… apart from being a stand-in for the shops in the post-apocalyptic version of SMT1. Rosa Candida is now an armor shop.

: On the way out, we run into a new demon: the Archangel. Shin Megami Tensei 1 has taught me that the proper response to seeing an angel in the SMT universe is immediately shooting it before it can start going off about the thousand year kingdom of God. In this case, that’s also the correct response: Divine family demons are all immune to magic (they null it, but do not absorb it like Lilim does) and extremely weak to both physical and gun attacks.

: The Yin & Yan convenience store has turned into a fortress-like gun shop. This is supposed to be kind of a brick joke: there’s an NPC at the Yin & Yan in the real world (post demon outbreak) who will complain that they don’t sell guns.

: Guns are still kind of useless, because even enemies that are weak to them will probably take more damage from magic or from physical attacks. Maki becomes our best gunner. The Kotuteki bow is a drop from the Archangels, which I farmed for EXP because Maki’s bow attack hits multiple enemies - it hits 1 to 3 enemies and also inflicts Bind… meaning a more appropriate name would probably be the Shibabow.

: I don’t even bother buying a gun for Mark. He’s still too slow and even with the upgraded shotgun wouldn’t do enough damage to justify spending money on it.

: I haven’t shown Reiji off yet, so here he is. He uses fist weapons and shares the rifle gun type with Nanjo. The upgraded rifle barely has better stats and in most cases, Reiji has much better things to do than use a gun.

: Nanjo is easily the weakest character in the entire party at this point - he’s at roughly the same speed Mark is and we haven’t found a better weapon for him.

: I did buy a new gun for Jihei, but I forgot to take a picture of it. I also put everyone from Shot Shells to Flashbangs, which do more damage and also inflict Blind on hit. He has the highest defensive stats of anyone, and also has good sword/gun damage.

: After a bit of grinding, we can go right to the Alaya Shrine. The encounter rate around here is really high, so even just walking from the school to the shrine around the corner was like five random encounters.

: “But this world’s Tsutomu seemed reliable… what’s that?”

: “Could this be one of his traps? One false move and I’ll catch it and crush it.”

: “Oh! It’s that butterfly from when we found Maki’s mother collapsed here!”

: “What a pretty butterfly… what say we catch it and keep it as a pet?”

: “You’re into butterflies, Nanjo?”

: Looking back on this after finishing the LP, it’s kind of a plot hole that none of the alternate party members know who Philemon is, because they’ve all met him by this point.

: “No… I… feel faint…!”

: Oh boy, it’s old man white-on-white. I’ll subtitle all of his text again.

: “How are you friends?”

: “Just as you thought, this world is a counterfeit of your own.”

: “It is this world where Kandori’s ambitions lie.”

: “If you pursue him… you will eventually discover the nature of this world and how to return to your home world.”

: “Kandori has made his fortress on the east side of town where he is searching for something.”

: “Should it fall into his hands, there will be no tomorrow for either world.”

: “You must stop Kandori.”

: “The first step is to use the subway terminal to reach the east side of town. But, the gate has a guardian.”

: “Look for the Expel Mirror.”

: “Kandori… so he’s in this town, too.”

: “Kandori’s here, too? Aw man, I have, like, a really bad feeling about this!”

: “Kandori, huh? Even a total stud like me would rather not deal with that guy…”

: “He said there’s a demon in the subway. And this, uh… Exp… Expel…?”

: I think the idea here is that the word “Expel” is hard to pronounce in Japanese, but Nanjo can do it because he’s presumably better at English than Mark is.
: “Kandori evidently wasn’t satisfied with simply overtaking our town… but I’ll teach him that his brand of greed will be his ruin.”
: My favorite part about the writing in this game is that Kandori is Nanjo’s mortal enemy not because of the whole attempted murder thing, but because Nanjo met him at a party once and found him to be kind of an asshole.

: If we’d actually bothered to explore the town before it got infested by demons, we’d have found that the city’s historical society has the Expel Mirror on display. Before we do that though, I wanted to fuse some new Personas for Maki and Reiji, as both of them lack any kind of multi-target damage.

: Maki gets a Pyro Jack, simply because it’s in her level range and has Best affinity. As far as Personas go, Pyro Jack isn’t great - his Magic Atk is like 40 points under Lilim’s, and Lilim is level 21. What’s important is that he has a multi-target spell.

: Reiji gets Vidofnir, which is actually an amazing Persona for several reasons: it has no major weaknesses (as very few enemies do gun damage) and also learns Bright Judgement at Rank 7, in addition to Mabufu and Magarula (second-tier wind damage spell). It also has an incredibly high Agility, meaning that Reiji is easily the second fastest person in the party.

: The Historical Society is just north of the school, and is also one of the only places we can go due to the giant wall.

: “Wh-what in the world…?”

: “Yeeeeek! What IS this!?”

: “Woah… what is that!?”

: It’s really hard to make out, to the point where I didn’t see it when I was recording, but there’s a face in the orb thing hovering above the mirror.

: “What was that…!?”
: “It looked like a little girl’s face, but she was saying not to take ‘this’. Did she mean the Expel Mirror?”
: “Who gives a damn? We gotta have it, or else.”

: “Here, Jihei. We can fight the monster in the subway once we have this, right?”

: The subway tunnels are mercifully short, but are highly annoying due to the high random encounter rate (seriously, I feel like they ratcheted it up after the SEBEC building) and the fact that it’s a maze. There’s new music here, but I’m not going to link it just yet because it’s actually the theme for the dungeon after this one, and it’d give away what that dungeon is.

: The subway is where I first noticed that the whole level gap situation was only getting worse. Jihei is something like level 26, while Maki, Nanjo and Mark are in the 21-22 range. Reiji is around 25. This means we couldn’t successfully negotiate with anything.

: Yato no Kami are basically cannon fodder for us: they resist physical and gun attacks but are weak to everything that isn’t Expel or Miracle damage.

: Cath Palug are… supposed to be giant Irish monster cats, but whatever. They’re weak to guns and neutral to most everything else.

: Finally there’s the Enku, which is an absolute shitfest to fight if you don’t have Reiji: they’re strong against everything that isn’t Fist-type damage and reflect guns.

: Trying to take the short route to the stairs reveals this dungeon’s gimmick: one-way floors. You can see the arrow on the minimap pointing which direction the floor goes.

: Most of this dungeon is just going down paths until you hit a one-way tile, and then going down the other paths that aren’t obviously dead ends until you find your way out. The subway is not a long or hard dungeon, just a very tedious one.

: Eventually we hit a giant hallway of one-way tiles, and find the final new demon in this area:

: Dark Elves are very, very weak to Nuclear damage, which we have a ton of.

: Past that corridor, we hit a save room and then the stairs down to B2F.

: They couldn’t even send Yog-Sothoth to fight us, they could only send Weenie Hut Jr. over here. This will be rectified once we hit the next dungeon, because this is what Atlus being nice looks like.

: “I knew it was gonna say that! Let’s do this, Jihei!”
: “Now’s not the time to bitch and moan. If we don’t beat this thing, we’ll never get our hands on that bastard!”

: “We must defeat it now!”

: “Are we really fighting this thing…? It’s so… nasty-looking…”

: “What a tasteless creature… and ugh, that horrible smell! Frickin’ gross!”

: In case you haven’t read Lovecraft, Yog-Sothoth is an eldritch god in the Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft was also a massive racist, so it’s not hard to understand the other name there, which is another eldritch god. Yog-Sothoth Jr is most likely Atlus misinterpreting the fishmen from The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

: Weenie Hut Jr. is weak to pretty much everything that Personas at this level are going to have: he’s weak to Nuclear (Mark, Nanjo), weak to Sword damage (Reiji with Bres, as I think he was one level too low to equip Vidofnir) and weak to Tech damage (Jihei, but also Mark).

: The wiki is definitely wrong about how much HP this boss has. I’d put it somewhere in the 1500 range, while the wiki has it at over 3000. Also, let me just show you what I mean by how bad the level gap is:

: So, uh… the game now goes out of its way to name the girl in black. Her name is Aki.

: “Up ahead is where I live. If you go in there, I’ll never let you out!”
: “We’re still going in, you realize. We absolutely must defeat Kandori.”
: “I won’t let you! If you go in there, I’ll trap you inside!”
: “You dumb kid… we’re not gonna fall for the same trick twice! You better start behavin’, or we’ll really punish you!”
: I don’t think fucking the school up really counted as a ‘trick’, though why no one has just put a bullet through Aki is a goddamn mystery.
: “I’m not dumb! Watch, I came up with a really fun game! You’ll fight a cute girl in it… wait and see!”

: Not pictured: me having to go all the way through the other side of the subway, which is about as long as the western half was.

: This is the other side of Mikage-cho… where what appears to be a giant forest is blocking our way to whatever it is that’s taken over the SEBEC building. The best we can do for right now is go to Joy Street, which is now…

: A note of caution - once you go into the Black Market, you can’t leave. Aki isn’t fucking around, and the dungeon in the Black Market absolutely goddamn sucks. We’ll go in there in the next update.

: There’s some optional dialogue in the historical society I couldn’t really find a place for in the update itself, because the site had screwed up the spacing for everything when I first wrote it.

: “Kandori evidently wasn’t satisfied with simply overtaking our town… but I’ll teach him that his brand of greed will be his ruin.”

: “So, uh… he said there’s a monster in the subway, yeah? I… don’t really need to go to the east side. H-Haha… just kidding…”

: “That mirror must have been thought to have the power to ‘expel’ since ancient times. To ward off evil, in other words.”

: “Y’know, it’d be nice if this subway monster wasn’t too disgusting.”

: There’s also some once you’ve actually picked up the expel mirror.

: “So this is the Expel Mirror… it’s so fantastically mysterious!”

: “So this is the Expel Mirror? I wonder if I could get a look at my face in it. My skin’s been all dry…”

: “This thing’s the Expel Mirror? Huh. Let’s see if it reflects my face…”

[Timrod]

And this is why if anyone ever tells you to play Strange Journey, you pitch them into the sun.

You know between meeting Lucy, his persona actually having a unique design, and his dramatic personality, I think Reiji might be the only actual protagonist here beyond the MC.

I played… I think like half an hour of Strange Journey and didn’t really like it. The older SMT games really haven’t aged well, even with remakes and remasters and whatnot.

Honestly though, I agree that most of the characters on the SEBEC route kinda suck. I’m going to do an update shortly where I talk about the manga version of Persona 1, and one thing you notice is that the writers really struggle to keep characters relevant.