: Welcome back to the Alaya Shrine. (Update: I had mentioned in the first draft that I loaded the save into an emulator to casino grind, but as it turns out, I could just buy the coins directly.)
: Naturally, here comes Philemon with his white-on-white subtitles.
: “Well done in returning here.”
: “I see my faith in you was not misplaced.”
: “The Alaya cavern behind this shrine leads to the sea of all mankind’s souls.”
: I should mention a couple of things here as well. First, the concept of a “sea of souls” will absolutely come up again in every other Persona game. Second, I looked it up and as it turns out, Alaya is shorthand for “Alaya-vijnana”, which is a Buddhist idea sort of like Jung’s collective unconscious except that it posits that reality doesn’t actually exist.
: “All souls are born there and someday return there.”
: “Sonomura Maki’s souil is about to return to that sea right now.”
: “It calls for you and for her ideal self.”
: “Now go.”
: “Only those who have been called may enter that cavern.”
: This is also a hint as to why Alaya Cavern is the worst fucking dungeon in this game. I’d put it on par with some of the dungeons from Devil Summoner. There’s one in Snow Queen that’s ostensibly worse, but even that doesn’t suck as bad as Alaya Cavern does.
: “Work together to help the lost soul.”
: So yeah, here’s the fucking godawful gimmick that makes Alaya Cavern suck. Remember how we spent all that time grinding Mark and Nanjo to be within negotiation range? IT WAS ALL POINTLESS! We can only take Jihei and Maki into the cavern.
: Philemon makes it seem like the Alaya Cavern is a point of no return. It isn’t. You can leave whenever - it’s just that only Jihei and Maki can go in.
: “…I’m putting Maki in your hands, man.”
: “We’ll be waiting here. Don’t take any silly risks.”
: In addition to sucking in general, the Alaya Cavern is easily the ugliest dungeon in the game. Let me go ahead and post the map.
: This in a nutshell will describe exactly why this dungeon fucking sucks. Notice that both Jihei and Maki are charmed - that’s because Otohime (the mermaid-looking thing) loves spamming Marin Karin and also cheating to be faster than Jihei. Doppelganger (the other enemy) likes to spam AOEs that hit our entire party because we only have two people.
: To make things worse, both Otohime and Doppelganger have giant pools of HP and resist Blast damage, which means Morrigan is useless and Odin is even more useless because I didn’t put anything good on him. What you’re supposed to do here is use Nuclear damage and guns… except none of the Personas we can fuse have Nuclear damage built in. Even worse, we only have one item that can even give a Persona nuclear damage, so it’s impossible for both Jihei and Maki to use it. This meant I needed to do some grinding. Again.
: The first thing I did was go to the casino and just straight up buy 6,000 casino chips. We’re not going to have anywhere else to spend the money anyway.
: Next, I buy two Scorching Tablets. Scorching Tablets can be given during fusion to make a Persona learn Megidolaon, the ultimate all-target nuclear spell.
: I then grind Maki up to Persona Level 53 (she was L53/P51 before) and fuse Usas for her. Usas has a really low agility stat, but makes up for it by having a much lower SP cost than most of the mid-50s level Personas and amazing magic attack/magic defense. Her resistances are also pretty good and she has no major weaknesses apart from death damage which actually kinda sucks.
: Jihei gets grinded to level 55 for Baal, who fucking rules. Sure, he’s got bad weaknesses, but look at that moveset! Bright Judgement was the move Kandori used to murder half the party at a time, and Bufudyne isn’t bad either. Add Megidolaon to the pool and.. yeah. We’re probably keeping Baal until the end of the game.
: Back in Alaya Cavern, we go through the shitshow that is this dungeon.
: Alaya Cavern is full of mask enemies. These cannot be negotiated with at all, and must be killed. The one on the left is Wrath, the one on the right is Envy.
: It would’ve been more thematic if I’d taken Ambassador John Thorman, but Baal gets the goddamn job done. Everything’s just great.. for now. You’ll see.
: The main dungeon consists entirely of going down a long spiral staircase, with a couple of optional stop-offs for items.
: The Crimson Tablet is another fusion item, and I only now learned how they work and it’s fucking stupid. To use a fusion item, you first have to know what Persona it makes - meaning you need a guide. You then need to make a fusion of the same arcana as that Persona and use the fusion item during that fusion, which will change it to whatever Persona the fusion item belongs to. If you don’t do it just so, the item is wasted.
: We eventually run into another group of charmfuckers. Guess what I do?
: Shove a fucking nuke in their face. We are all sons of bitches now. I should mention that most of the fire spells in this game cause slowdown, and Megidolaon (which uses the same sprites as Agilao and Agidyne) is no exception.
: By the way, don’t ever go off the main staircase or this shit happens - you wind up in a stairwell with no down stair and have to go all the way back with the constant threat of charmfuckers hanging over you.
: B7F has a treasure room in it, but it has nothing good.
: You might be thinking “Oh boy, a fusion item!” and yes, it is.. however, it’s a fusion item for a fucking level 97 Persona that requires two specific demons to fuse. The ONLY reason you would ever consider grinding that much is if you’re planning on doing the PSP-exclusive bonus dungeons, which.. god, why the fuck would you do that? The bonus dungeons are a giant maze combined with a boss rush where every enemy is level 99 with 99 in every stat.
: On the lower floors, there’s new encounters. I forget what the mask is called because I was too busy nuking it. Mushus is the same way: you nuke it, it dies.
: There’s also Catoblepas (in front) and Dominion in the back. Dominion is a fucking piece of shit because it reflects all magic. This means if we accidentally hit it with a Megidolaon, that’s a game over.
: Fortunately, we have some pretty good backup abilities. Baal has a spell called Gentle Wave, which is basically Mabufula but with a set AOE instead of hitting the entire enemy party. It does a bit less damage than Megidolaon does, but it allows us to avoid hitting Dominion. The multi-sword enemy you see is Dakini, which is a giant piece of shit for reasons I’ll get into momentarily.
: Here we are, B8F, the second to last floor of the dungeon. We’ve made it this far, surely nothing could possibly go wrong.
: Two steps in, we encounter a group of 4 Succubi, which are this floor’s equivalent to the charmfuckers. I don’t know this as I’m not looking every enemy up on the wiki.
: Succubi, like Lilim, absorb ALL MAGIC THROWN AT THEM. This includes Megidolaon.
: They then respond by sleep-locking the party to death. If you get this encounter, you’re basically fucked no matter what you’ve got for a Persona unless that Persona is Lilim… who I didn’t have equipped. Second game over in this shithouse dungeon.
: Third attempt. This time, I get halfway through B8F without getting destroyed by sleepfuckers or charmfuckers.
: At the halfway point.. we run into a very strange room. Is that.. is that Jihei? What the shit?
: I swear that if I run into a child version of Jihei I’m ordering him to nuke it.
: “Jihei! There’s two of you! How…!?”
: “Why is he here? And why is he playing games?”
: I mean, same reason I am, to get away from all the Makis.
: “A-Are you… really Jihei?”
: Is the answer to the last one Elly, because it damn well better be.
: “Huh?”
: So, let me explain how this works. Jihei’s double plays a number of scenes we’ve already been through. Each of these scenes corresponds to one of the “morality choices” we made through the game: there’s six of them.
: I should also mention that no one on YouTube has the lines for what happens if you don’t pick the right choices. The script I have does - it was hidden at the end of a file. What I’ll do is post the line for the wrong choice directly underneath the related screenshot, using the Alternate Party Member Text header.
: “Remember this? You left the poor woman to die..”
: " ‘I’m looking out for number one’.. are you sure that wasn’t your reasoning?"
: “And here, you tried to abandon an old man, though he was only a pawn…”
: “Did you really think that Chisato’s painting was superior…?”
: “Say ‘I wasn’t afraid of being turned to stone.’ Can you say that honestly?”
: “You lacked the vision to see through to the truth… you judge only with your eyes, and not with your heart.”
: “This man’s soul was sick with doubt… but you could not give his soul the salvation it yearned for..”
: “And the cause was the doubt gnawing at your own soul.”
: “And what did you say to that? You couldn’t tell her not to run, for you too were running, weren’t you?”
: “Can you look me in the eye and deny that, self?”
: “I’m every inch like you. I’m you… and you’re me.”
: “We’re two sides of the same coin. No, not just two…”
: “There are tens of thousands of 'you’s inside yourself.”
: At this point, we’ve jumped right out of Jung and right into Buddhism.
: “…”
: “Your will is rooted nice and deep. You have a good grip on yourself.”
: “I think you and your friends can handle them.”
: “They’re keys to awakening the strongest Personas sealed deep in one’s soul.”
: “Ask that old geezer Igor how to use them. But.. don’t forget. The ‘me’ you see here is still you.”
: I know for a fact that my Buddhist doppelganger would absolutely end this with “You’re a big guy” and kill me if I did not respond “For you.”
: Going to need to use a bit of text here, so bear with me. Those items are for, in order: Jihei, Mark, Maki, Nanjo, and Reiji.
: Anyway, there’s four variations of this scene with Jihei’s doppelganger. One of them happens if you get none of the choices right. A second happens if you get more than zero, but fewer than half. A third happens if you get more than half, but not all of them, and finally there’s the version where you get all of them that we’ve just seen. Some of these are kind of dumb because there’s no way you’d know you did something wrong until now - particularly not fighting Hariti, which ultimately has zero impact on anything. That scene progresses exactly the same regardless of what you do. Let’s do the optional scenes now.
: First, let’s do the ‘no right choices’ version. These lines all happen immediately after the “tens of thousands of yous” line.
: “…So quit bothering me. You must know how it feels. Long as I can play games all day, I’m good. I’d rather stay out of trouble.”
: “Hurry up and get out of here. See ya.”
: “Why’re you acting like this!? Jihei is a nice guy!”
: “Let’s go, Jihei!”
: “…If you made it this far, it means there’s some hope for you. Alright, self… go do the best you can.”
: I hate Atlus for taking digs at the player (especially given how unrealistic the characters in any given Persona game are) but I really, really like this version of the cutscene. Anyway, next up is the ‘less than half the choices right’ version. In this version, we only get the Rosetta Stone for Jihei.
: “…Someone seems to be aiming to take your place, but that won’t happen.”
: “Your will is rooted nice and deep. You have a good grip on yourself.”
: “Here, take this. I think you can handle it. It’s the key to awakening the strongest Persona sealed deep in your soul.”
: Finally, the version where we get more than half, but less than all of them.
: “…Someone seems to be aiming to take your place, but that won’t happen.”
: “Your will is rooted nice and deep. You have a good grip on yourself.”
: “Here, take this. I think you and the girl can handle them. They’re the keys to awakening the strongest Persona sealed deep in one’s soul.”
: The ultimate Personas are all just above where our level is, and I’m not entirely positive that the rest of the party is going to be levelled up to match Jihei. What I’m going to do is hope that Atlus was nice enough to match levels. If not, I’ll grind, but I plan on Personalogging all of the ultimate Personas. You might also ask if Brown, Elly, and Ayase have ultimate Personas - they do, and we’ll maybe see them in Snow Queen.
: I made it all the way past Jihei’s doppelganger to the stairs down to the final level. Nothing could go wrong, right?
: This is the part where I find out Dakini reflects Nuclear damage, and manage to game over a third time. I didn’t find out until after I finished recording that there’s a way we could have cheesed this - the casino sells a fusion item that makes Succubus, which is basically a higher-level Lilim. It’s got crap for attacks, but absorbs all elements and reflects status effects.
: I also ran into a few more enemies on my final run - Yaksa and Tengu, neither of whom are noteworthy for any reason.
: I should mention that as soon as we go into that door, all random encounters in Alaya Cavern stop. This is probably a good thing even if it stops you from grinding, since why the fuck would you want to grind here?
: Fake Maki’s portrait versus Real Maki’s portrait is me before and after doing this godawful shitheap of a dungeon multiple times. It’s not even that long, it’s just tedious as hell.
: “There’s nowhere left to hide!”
: This line kind of didn’t make any sense to me the first time I read it, and it still doesn’t. I get what they’re trying to convey, but it’s kind of hard to explain. This line probably should’ve been something like “If I was more like you, my life would have turned out much differently…”
: “Stop that! I don’t want to hear that kind of talk from my own mouth!”
: “Did you ever try to change? How? All you did was hide under the sheets and cry!”
: I also really like how Fake Maki sees Fake Jihei and goes “You know what? I want to do that.”
: “But now’s our chance! We can change along with Masao, Kei, Reiji, and Jihei…”
: “Doesn’t looking at those guys make you feel like nothing is impossible? You just have to get over yourself!”
: “I won’t run away anymore… I’ll own up to the mistakes I’ve made!”
: I should mention (since it comes up surprisingly often in Japanese-made games) that Avidya is a Sanskrit word that means “ignorance”, though in philosophy it goes a little bit beyond that to include things like incorrect knowledge or delusions. It’s actually more of a Hindu thing than it is Buddhist, but the same idea is used in Buddhism.
: The other big thing about Avidya is that in Hinduism, it apparently is used to describe the Self (basically the same as Jung’s Self) living in a state where reality is suppressed.
: “I wonder if what I was trying to say got across… well, all I can do now is keep believing in myself. Let’s go back to the others!”
: Random encounters are disabled and I don’t feel like walking, so Emergency Exit it is.
: " 'Bout time! It was getting tired of sitting around."
: “It seems to have gone well, mm? Now then, let’s head to the school and meet this Pandora.”
: “Tch.. you’re pretty tough. I thought you’d eat it. Then I could rush in and rescue the princess!”
: “Jihei! I’m so glad you’re back! You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
: I really, really wish we could get rid of Nanjo and Mark and just take Elly in their place.
: “Yeesh, Jihei, you were in there so long I thought you’d died.”
: So unfortunately, the game was not nice and did not update our other party members to Jihei’s level. This means that I’d need to grind some 12 levels for Mark and Nanjo, and 8 for Reiji, in addition to 4 for Jihei and around 5 for Maki. This is a lot of grinding, given that the next dungeon is the last one. We’re talking.. probably a good four to five hours of grind.
: I did try to do a little bit of this on the actual PSP, and then remembered I kind of deleted Morrigan and equipped Odin to Nanjo. Odin has Bad compatibility with Nanjo, which means that he can’t actually use Odin to do anything.
: The first thing I did was head to the casino to pick up a fusion item.
: This would’ve been a complete pain in the ass if Jihei was anything less than level 59, because the limit for creating a Persona is.. I think 10 levels above your highest character. We’re not actually making Hanuman - we’ll never reach level 68 and Hanuman kind of sucks anyway.
: What’s important is that Hanuman is a Magician arcana Persona. This means we can use the Suitengu Talisman to fuse Varuna for Mark.
: Varuna is fast, and more importantly has Mabufudyne for elemental coverage. Unfortunately, due to his nature as a “special Persona”, we can’t give him spells via stones or tablets.
: I also returned Hermod to get a pair of Vidar Shoes, which boost Agility by 5. These go on Mark immediately, boosting his speed to well over Nanjo’s.
: So now, I’ve got a question. The next dungeon is the last one for the SEBEC route, after which we will be moving immediately to Snow Queen. I want to grind out Jihei’s ultimate Persona because we’re likely going to need it, but I really don’t want to grind out the rest of them.
: There’s a memory editor code that works in the emulator (and probably works on the actual PSP if I bothered to install it) that gives everyone 500,000 EXP every battle. If I use this on the save I made immediately before I fused Baal, everyone winds up at more or less the right level to use their ultimate Personas. The question is, do we want do to do that in the first place?
: The problem is that most of the ultimate Personas frankly suck, apart from Jihei’s. Honestly, I’d rather do Avidya World with Baal reassigned to Nanjo (would take some grinding) and maybe find a Persona for Reiji and give it a decent move (maybe Magrydyne).
- Use the cheat, get everyone’s ultimate Persona
- Don’t use the cheat, stay console accurate.
: To help you decide, I’m going to Personalog all the ultimate Personas we can make right now. Keep in mind that even with the code, I’d have to find the right demons to fuse to make them.
: First up is Amon Ra, who is fused using the Rosetta Stone and is Jihei’s ultimate Persona. I’ve also heard he’s
got a dagger of some kind. We absolutely want Amon Ra for his signature ability, Hieroglyphein, along with his amazing stats and low SP cost.
: Side note: The ??? you see under resistances on all of the Personas? That’s their resistance to Hieroglyphein. The wiki hides what it does, but I’ll say it here “Effective against Karma and Fiend order enemies.” I wonder where we might run into one of those?
: Next up is Verdandi, fused with the Pasque Flower. Verdandi is probably the weakest of the ultimate Personas - her SP cost is barely better than Usas and her moveset sucks, on top of having really low Agility for an ultimate. If I have to skip the ultimates, this is one I wouldn’t mind passing on. I also forgot to mention it in the image but “Passe” is the name of the fusion item in Japanese.
: This is Nanjo’s ultimate Persona, fused with the Amber Glasses. Yes, Nanjo is so boring that his ultimate Persona is just his butler. The manga implies that the Amber Glasses are actually the real Yamaoka’s. Having Yamaoka with us would basically reduce Nanjo to only using his gun, because all of Yamaoka’s moves SUCK. Seriously, 202 Magic Attack and the best you can do is some shitty status effects and no third-tier element spells? The only good part of Yamaoka is that he reflects EVERYTHING, but that isn’t really good enough.
: Mark’s ultimate Persona, fused with the Purified Water, is Susano-O. Having Susano-O as your Persona is like a kiss of death marking you as the worst character in your game (see also: Yosuke in P4). Susano-O isn’t awful, but notice that none of his spells are all-target. Varuna is the better pick for this reason, and if I level Mark up a bit I can probably get him something with Mazandyne.
: Finally, here’s Reiji’s ultimate persona, which is fused with the Babylonian Coffin. Mot is basically an upgraded Loki: he has most of the same moves, all of which are kind of bad. His resistances are good, but otherwise his brother Baal is infinitely better.
