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

[Timrod]

@SpammyV

I’m glad that we reunited Maki and Maki, but now if I’m following correctly we need Maki’s help so we can go stop Maki and Maki so Maki needs to stay back and protect Maki’s Mom?

@CommanderKeene

Don’t forget that we’re stopping Maki and Maki from destroying Maki’s world and killing Maki, Maki, Maki, Maki, and Maki.

And then we’re going to join the Maquis.

Maki and Knuckles, featuring Maki and Knuckles and over 20 pounds of Maki and Knuckles. And Knuckles.

Anyway, I wanted to do a quick post to say that I went back to Update 7 and started putting in the alternate party dialog and the optional stuff, and boy is there a lot! The update’s basically twice the size it was, making me very glad I didn’t try to fit in the cutscene with Tsutomu, because Update 8 will also have a load of alternate text.

While doing that, I realized why it is that Elly has two sets of lines after the return to the Lost Forest, and it wasn’t immediately apparent to me when I read the script for that part because it’s just a bunch of lines.

On every route that is not Reiji’s, there are a few spots where your party members can ask you questions that you can answer with a yes or a no: there’s one in Update 7 right after where we get Reiji. These all seem to be entirely optional and missable. Reiji doesn’t seem to have any, but that’s probably because most of his lines up until we kill Kandori are just ellipses.

So anyway, when we return to the gingerbread house after doing Deva Yuga, Elly has an optional question for you: “Do you like domestic girls?” I verified this using a video playthrough someone did where they had Elly.

The answer to this question determines if you get Formal Elly (the way she always talks up to that point) or Casual Elly. I’m going to go back and make a note of this in the update, but now I’ve figured out what the deal is with that. If you miss the question, it seems like she stays Formal Elly forever.

[Timrod]

: 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.

[Riley]

Cheat the dang system also EXCUSE you Surfing Butler is clearly the BEST Persona how dare you

[SpammyV]

Imagine fighting demons and meeting yourself but yourself is just, “Bro this WoW Raif just started and we really need DPS I’ll enlighten you later man.”

[Fefnir]

@Timrod

The bonus dungeons are a giant maze combined with a boss rush where every enemy is level 99 with 99 in every stat.

Wow, and I thought Square Enix was bad at adding bonus dungeons to their remakes. There’s no part of that that doesn’t sound like a slog.

[Timrod]

: So unfortunately, the EXP cheats did not work. This meant I had to do a lot of grinding manually, as in five hours worth. All of this was done on the actual PSP, not an emulator.

: My first instinct was to go to Avidya World and grind, since logically being the final dungeon and all it should have enemies that give the most EXP. There’s also a healing spot right inside the entrance. I should mention I only just now found out that Circle brings up a map screen.

: Avidya World has a mix of old and new enemies, including Girimehkala (Purski is the better elephant and we all know it) and Alecto, which is yet another generic harpy that dies extremely quickly to ma-dyne spells. Most of the enemies here are ice-based, so Varuna does an amazing job.

: The problem with Avidya World is this: most of the encounters are against one or two enemies: Gdon almost always shows up by itself, as does Ubelluris. Alone, they’re only worth around 2,000 EXP… but we can get upwards of 10,000 in multi-enemy encounters on the streets outside. The enemies here are a lot less threatening overall, but at the same time not worth grinding.

: I started by grinding Mark, as he was the lowest level character in the party at the time I started the grind. It took me over two and a half hours to get him to the point where he could get his ultimate Persona.

: Around the time that Mark reached Persona level 55, I started looking at new Personas for him, since Varuna isn’t exactly the best out on the streets where there are lots of things that are immune to ice.

: One thing I tried is Suzaku, who would be fucking amazing if he wasn’t a Totem Persona. Suzaku is fused using the Crimson Tablet we found in the treasure room on the 8th floor of Alaya Cavern. Unfortunately, he’s stuck with a garbage moveset until he reaches Max rank. I did fuse him as an experiment (and reloaded when I found out he sucks) so I’ll log it.

: Instead, I went with the Persona I probably should’ve given to Jihei instead of Baal, because it reflects EVERYTHING. Remember how I said Yamaoka would be really good if only he had a single damage spell? Meet Armaiti. Armaiti is Yamaoka but with the ability to use spell tablets.

: In hindsight, I probably should’ve given Armaiti Maziodyne instead of Magrydyne, since Magrydyne kinda sucks damage-wise. The coverage is nice though. I should also mention that I wish we had Elly, since her ultimate Persona is one of the few that is actually better than Armaiti.

: So yeah, this is where I spent about… three and a half hours or so.

: I immediately fused Susano-O, who I am probably never going to actually use because Armaiti is that much better.

: Next up was Jihei, who I wanted to get levelled sooner rather than later due to Amon Ra being a useless pile of shit until Max rank.

: Amon Ra’s moveset is a total mystery to me. Azure Cessation is an AOE spell equivalent to Maragion, except it only hits a small area that is actually equal to what Agidyne hits. I remind you that in Persona 1, all of a Persona’s moves cost the same amount of SP. We’re basically only going to pull out Amon Ra for the final boss.

: While levelling up Reiji, I find out that there is no way in hell I’m going to be using Hieroglyphein this run. To use it, we’d need to use Amon Ra a total of 100 times, since Jihei’s Persona level is within 10 of Amon Ra’s. If I wanted this to go any faster, I’d need to bring him up to level 74, at which point it’s moot because there are level 74 Personas that can kick the shit out of Hieroglyphein damage-wise. Fuck this game and its godawful mechanics.

: After another hour and a half or so (and fusing Loki as an intermediary Persona since I needed to give Reiji Megidolaon and he’s incompatible with almost everything) we get Reiji his real ultimate Persona: Barbatos. I’ll Personalog both.

: Loki sucks. Reiji’s SP is already pretty low, and with the Megidolaon spam he was going through most of it within a couple of fights. His design is… it looks like a Muppet, only made for sex.

: Barbatos, on the other hand, is goddamn amazing. Like Yamaoka and Armaiti, he reflects everything, only instead of reflecting Expel and Miracle like they do, he reflects Death and Curse instead. His moveset sucks, but we can fix that.

: Finally, I get Nanjo to 60, allowing us to fuse Yamaoka.

: With Yamaoka, we now have three out of five party members who reflect magic. As for offense, we’ve got two Megidolaons, one Magrydyne, and one Maziodyne, with an additional Mabufudyne if I leave Nanjo with Varuna. Yamaoka will never be useful outside of his amazing stats and defenses, but…

: I deleted Yatagarasu and got Ame no Murakumo, which is weird because you’d think Susano would drop that given that it’s part of his mythology. Ame no Murakumo is… pretty good for a sword.

: With that, it’s time to head back to school. I’m not going to bother fusing Verdandi, and there’s kind of a dearth of Personas between level 50 and level 60: you’ve got the ultimates, you’ve got Baal and Armaiti, and that’s about all.

: “Do you like school, Jihei? I… used to consider it dull. But not anymore, I don’t think. That’s thanks to my friendship with you and the others.”

: That’s Formal Elly.

: “Do you like school, Jihei? I… used to think it was boring, but I’m getting to like it. It’s much easier now that I’ve met you all.”

: “I actually really like school. I’m a crappy student, though. But hey, studying isn’t everything!”

: God dammit Brown.

: “Do you like school, Jihei? 'Cause you know, I kinda do. Most of the time, I get to do whatever I want here.”

: All of the doors in the school are locked, except for the library. This means we can’t heal one last time before heading into Avidya World. While I’m at it, let me mention one thing I did after I found this out.

: The first thing I did was to to the gem store in the mall and trade a bunch of gems for HP incenses, which I use on Maki.

: I also restocked on healing items. The gem store sells chewing souls (SP recovery) so I maxed out on those again.

: There’s one other thing we’re going to want, that I only knew about at this point because I’d seen the map for Avidya World. We haven’t seen a single damage floor this entire game, which is a remarkable amount of restraint on the part of Atlus’s map designers. That’s going to change. Anyway, the library is back on the 3rd floor of the school, where we left it.

: “Maki! Oh good, you’re safe too!”

: “Hey Yosuke, what happened here? There’s no one around but you guys.”

: “I’m not sure… it was like this when we got back. The east side of town’s vanished, too.”

: “I want to know what’s going on as much as you do!”

: “Pandora?”

: “I’m sorry, both of you… I’m at fault for all of this… it’s the real reason behind everything…”

: There’s a fade to black here while Maki explains the whole Five Maki Theory to Chisato.

: “…”

: “So that’s it…”

: “I promise I’ll return everyone to their original world.”

: There was something here that I realized makes no sense. Remember when Maki was talking about her dream world and how there wasn’t a hospital or a police station because it’s a perfect world and people don’t need those things? If there’s no doctors, who put the sling on Yosuke’s arm? Why is there a nurse’s office in the school? Why is there a doctor’s office north of the mall where I spent an inordinate amount of time recovering SP?

: “If you want to hit me, Chisato, I’ll understand. Go right ahead.”

: You know, I have a feeling that Maki actually mindwiped Chisato somehow and just kind of injected her with her own personality. The way Chisato is acting now is a complete 180 from the last time we met her, even after she gave up the whole Harem Queen thing.

: “You’re such an idiot, Maki! You’re just as thick as you’ve always been…”

: “Hey, Chisato, c’mon…”

: “It’s me who needs to apologize. You called me into this world because you thought of me as your best friend, right?”

: Wait, what? She wasn’t even there when Nanjo explained that whole thing! Maki is fucking evil! Seriously, I’m waiting for her to pull out Zelenin’s weird taco suit from Strange Journey and start preaching about how mindwiping people is perfectly fine if an angel tells you to.

: “And I… I betrayed you…”

: “Chisato… thanks…”

: “Now go on. We’ll wait here so we don’t get in your way. Once things settle down… let’s all go to an amusement park together! Sound good?”

: “…Yeah.”

: “An amusement park, huh? Heheh… might be fun to act like a kid again for a day. So let’s hurry up and get this done!”

: “Maki, please open the door for us.”

: “Will do!”

: There’s alternate party member dialogue here, but it’s all the same thing. There’s quite a bit of optional dialogue here, though.

: “Hmm… these compacts may represent the three primary colors of light. One’s heart can be any color, I suppose. Which color all depends on one’s self… perhaps’ that’s the reasoning behind it.”

: My heart is only unlocked with four blenders that are the exact base colors for the CMYK color standard. There’s the cyan blender, the magenta blender, the yellow blender, and the kapische? blender. All four colors.

: “All of my worst qualities are through this door… I refuse to let them win!”

: “Hurry and go. I’ll take out the small fry for you.”

: Reiji is basically invincible at this point, so yeah I can picture him running down the halls screaming “I’M FUCKING INVINCIBLE COME AT ME BITCHES”.

: “It all comes down to this… let’s end it quickly and visit the amusement park.”

: “So this is it, huh? Let’s hurry so we can get to the amusement park quicker! I want to ride the ferris wheel with you, Jihei!”

: Elly is still the best girl and I wish I could trade Maki, Nanjo, and Mark for her.

: “I’m pumped! Anyone who stands in my way will get a faceful of my Persona power!”

: “Hmm, an amusement park, huh? I SO wanna ride the freefall! Last time I rode it five times in a row - this time I’m gonna shoot for ten! And I expect you to be there with me, Jihei!”

: “Be careful. But man, you got it made, huh? It’s easy to tell who Maki likes…”

: If you have Elly or Ayase in your party, Chisato has another line here.

: “And it looks like she’s not the only one. Better look out, Jihei!”

: “Just keep hanging in there! I can’t do much, but I’ll be rooting for you guys.”

: Let’s get that map up.

: This is HALF of Avidya World. As you can see, it’s a gigantic fucking maze. I’m not going to post a whole lot of shots of the maze itself because it’s exactly as boring as it looks, and then some.

: The first two floors are really easy. It’s when you get to the third floor that shit gets serious. By the way, I’m glad I grinded a bit because once you leave the second floor, grinding is basically impossible. Ignore the “1F” in the top-left. Technically, the entire dungeon is on the first floor minus the end parts.

: On the third floor, two new enemies show up. One is Rukh, which is a total pushover. Weak to lightning, dies very quickly to Megidolaon, nothing special.

: The second… is Reiji’s Persona in demon form. As an enemy, Barbatos is exactly as overpowered as it is in Persona form: it reflects everything that isn’t physical or guns.

: The problem is that they like to spam Curse damage. One hit took off over half of Nanjo’s HP, and Barbatos has enough HP that you do not want to try and gun them down. Instead, you want to negotiate and grab their spell card, then use that to negotiate any other Barbatos away.

: Once you reach the “second floor” (really the 4th) things get even worse. Not only is Barbatos still around, but now the game tosses a new wrench into the mix.

: No, not you. Oberon is weak to pretty much everything and dies in one Megidolaon.

: No, it’s these things right here. Throne, like Dominion, reflects magic. Unlike Barbatos, they don’t have anything particularly nasty so it’s usually okay to gun them down, but in this case we just negotiate them away. Now it’s time to post the rest of the map.

: The fifth floor, as you can see, is a massive dark zone.

: Floor five introduces Tlazoteotl, which looks like a generic succubus but is actually the Aztec god of filth. From Persona 1 onward, she’s portrayed as the top half of a humanoid woman sticking out of a toilet. Like all Night order demons, Tlazoteotl absorbs magic and loves to use Death damage. We want to negotiate her away as well.

: Floor five also introduces us to Cromm Cruach. Hilariously, if you have Airgetlam with you, there’s a chance Airgetlam can auto-negotiate with it. I’ve never seen Persona Chat happen, but supposedly it does. Cromm Cruach is a joke, is what I’m saying. Very weak to being nuked.

: By the way, this is what happens if you don’t negotiate Tlazoteotl away. Mark died in one hit and Jihei is off getting stoned. This would be worse if we had Elly and her ultimate Persona.

: Floor six is straightforward, but has a very cruel joke in it. What you’re looking to do is get to these stairs, in the Northwestern corner. If you go the other way, there’s a hole that drops you all the way back down to the beginning of the dungeon.

: The stairs on Floor 6 lead us all the way back down to Floor 1, except now we’re in a back area. There’s a Velvet Room here, and I fused Verdandi but never actually equipped her.

: Floor seven introduces us to more new enemies. Culebre is a joke, as are Xiuhtecuhtli (the weird floating thing in front) and Hecatoncheires, also known as the toughest enemy in D&D 3rd edition, beating out even the Terrasque. Rangda reflects Nuclear (which is strange because it’s known for reflecting physical in P4 and P5) but is otherwise not dangerous.

: Finally, here we are at the bottom. Floor eight. Floor 8 has a bunch of unique enemies, which is really weird because it’s the final dungon… unless you’re doing Mikage Ruins, the bonus dungeon. I still don’t even know where that is.

: The mainstays of Floor 8 are Cherub and Jahi, which… they’re Divine (think Dominion) and Night (Lilim) order, respectively. They’re too high level to negotiate with, so they have to be gunned down. Fortunately, neither of them are capable of using death or curse damage - Jahi mostly uses a spell called Decover that stops you healing, and Cherub mostly sticks to physical attacks and Megidolaon (which three out of our five party members reflect and the other two usually dodge).

: Mangadhai is some kind of buffalo, and dies to Megidolaon just like everything else that isn’t Night or Divine order. They’re supposed to be some kind of buffalo-hydra mix from Mongolia that can grow up to 100 heads. Swallow your buffalo, don’t let your neck react.

: Hresvelgr is annoying as shit in that it has a lot of HP and resists most types of magic.

: There’s also Ganesha and… Grimies. The wiki claims that Grimies are supposed to be the greys rumored to be kept in Area 51. They only ever show up in Persona 1.

: Fafnir made an appearance on the tile immediately before the boss room. He died quickly.

: By the way, see those exclamation marks? Those are damage floors, and you have to pass over like ten of them to get to the boss room. They do… exactly one damage. My guess is they had to bring the map designer for SMT 1 into the hospital with a terminal case of blue balls. “I just want to put in damage floors! What the hell is wrong with you guys!? Where’s the damage floor spirit? What? You mean I can put in damage floors! Fuck yes we’re doing this entire dungeon full of damage floors! What do you MEAN they only do 1 damage!?” At least he got his revenge in Nocturne.

: Oh, hi Maki.

: OH JESUS DICKSHITTING CHRIST! She-Mara! She-Mara! This is not a fucking drill!

: So yes, Pandora is a giant two-headed penis monster, with one of the penis heads being Maki’s face. I’m pretty sure there is an entire category of weird furry porn dedicated to this shit. (Note: there is, it gets posted on /v/ all the time.)

: You know, if I ever walked into my own Jungian psyche and found out that deep down I was actually giant penis monster, I’d probably start reconsidering my life choices.

: “Look! Is that the core of the Deva System behind it!?”

: No, I’m pretty sure that’s a gigantic blob of sticky white stuff.

: “No! That’s no gate to paradise at all! It’s a Pandora’s box that will bring evil to this world!”

: So, Pandora. If you’ve really been paying attention, you might ask why we’d want Hieroglyphein in this dungeon, considering that none of the enemies we’ve run into thus far have been Karma or Fiend order. While Pandora is neither of those things, she also takes bonus damage from Hieroglyphein. In fact, it’s her only consistent weakness and will end her much more quickly than any other method.

: You can see that Megidolaon is only doing around 275 damage. You do NOT want to waste your SP here. Instead, if you don’t have Hieroglyphein, you want to use guns. Guns are Pandora’s only other weakness.

: Pandora spends most of her time trying to hit you with status effects, in particular Stone and Paralyze. She has one move that is particularly dickish called Evil Smile, which “levels down” your character and drains a considerable amount of their SP in addition to paralyzing them.

: This is very bad because Mark is our dedicated healer for this fight. The problem is that both Evil Smile and Paralyze Puncture (non-elemental magic damage plus paralyze) go through resistances, so even if you would normally reflect the paralyze (as Mark does) it’ll still hit you.

: The trick here is to just spam guns. Guns should be your one and only damage source. Pandora’s first form has around 5800 HP, and will die pretty quickly. I should mention that Pandora also causes massive amounts of slowdown due to all the sprites or something.

: You just watched a giant naked green version of yourself hatch from a giant penis monster where one of the dicks is your face. How is ANY OF THAT beautiful? What the fuck is wrong with you?

: Pandora’s second form is where you want to start using Hieroglyphein, but no other magic. You see, Pandora has a gimmick here.

: When her hair is red, Pandora ABSORBS all magic thrown at her that isn’t Miracle element or Hieroglyphein. This is very bad, and there’s almost no way you’re going to figure this out without healing her for some pretty substantial damage without using a guide. What you want to do here is use physical attacks. Assuming she doesn’t buff her defense (which she can), Mark can hit her for over 300 damage with a single physical attack.

: In this form, Pandora has two pretty nasty attacks. One is Mabufudyne, which three out of our five party members reflect back at her. Thankfully, reflected spells do not get absorbed (and Pandora reflects rather than absorbs ice anyway).

: The second is an attack called Butterfly Storm. Butterfly Storm hits everyone for non-elemental magic damage and also applies a random status effect, which also bypasses resistance/reflect on status effects.

: After a few turns, Pandora’s hair changes from red to blue. When her hair is blue, Pandora becomes highly resistant (but not immune) to physical attacks. Instead, she becomes weak to the following magic types: Earth, Electric, Nuclear, and Gravity. Good thing we have three out of those four damage types covered!

: A single Megidolaon from Jihei did like 400 damage, with Maki doing basically the same on her turn. I really should’ve just given Mark and Reiji Megidolaon as well, because Magrydyne and Maziodyne don’t really work all that well on her.

: Magrydyne and Maziodyne hit for about 175 damage each, meaning that Reiji and Mark combined are hitting for less than Jihei does. This could be much worse, however. If we were using just the ultimate Personas, only Jihei would be doing any kind of damage, as Pandora nulls wind (Susano-O), blast (also Susano-O), curse and death (Mot) and expel (Yamaoka, if I bothered ranking him up).

: At one point, the fight got pretty dicey, as Mark ran out of SP to heal and Pandora killed both Maki and Nanjo. Megidolaon saved this fight. Looking back, I probably should’ve fused Morrigan again and given her to Nanjo instead.

: “You already know, don’t you?”

: “It’s 'cause we’re not alone.”

: “Because we work not as individuals, but as a team.”

: “It’s because we work together.”

: “We’re not alone!”

: “Heheh… that, and we believe in ourselves.”

: “People can’t live in isolation. If things are hard, just look around. We’ll be there for you.”

: “At last… it’s over.”

: “Yeah…”

: “Thank you… all of you. We have to part ways now… but I’ll never forget you all.”

: “Hey! Whaddaya mean, part ways…?”

: This is actually technically correct. Fake Maki is an anima, and the anima is considered part of the shadow.

: “It was fun… really, it was.”

: “Hey! Maki…! That’s not fair! Whoa!”

: And there goes our party.

: I’d like to say that this CGI looks creepy as shit.

: God dammit. I don’t hate that Jihei gets a kiss, I hate that it’s not from Elly.

: Jihei’s got that same look Leon does at the end of Resident Evil 4 when Ashley asks if he wants to stop somewhere.

: Oh look, it’s white-on-white subtitles man again, for a scene that I should mention is COMPLETELY NON-CANON. Seriously, Persona 2 is going to establish something about Philemon that makes this scene not work.

: “Nothing more need be said…”

: “I’m sure you have all discovered by now your true selves.”

: I mentioned this before, but under Jung you cannot discover your true self and Philemon logically should know this because he invented it.

: “The smiles you wear are no longer false masks.”

: “You may find yourselves troubled, suffering, or even lost in the future.”

: “But there is nothing to fear.”

: “Look to your soul for your true self.”

: “No matter what trials you may face, that will be enough for you to weather the storm.”

: “Now go forth…”

: “Into your bright futures.”

: As a warning, Persona 2 establishes that this scene is not and cannot be canon.

: What… no. It can’t be…

: PHILEMON WAS ROLAND THE ENTIRE TIME! Oh dear god the Ni no Kuni 2 LP never ended. I’ve been trapped in it since 2018!

: I should mention that this exact text sequence over stock footage plays over the bad ending as well. The bad ending happens in Maki’s hospital room in Deva Yuga, and ends with Mai closing the door to Maki’s psyche and destroying the Deva System.

: Is this the part where I unlock The 4th Survivor and I get to play as HUNK and just neck snap all the demons to death? It feels like that part.

: I remember my high school graduation. It sucked.

: Fuck yeah Reiji! My goddamn boy!

: Obviously, this scene will be different depending on who your fifth party member is.

: “Huh? After all that bitching, you decided to show up anyway?”

: “Heheh…”

: “What in the… you’re behaving rather strangely today.”

: “Hidehiko was telling anyone who’d listen. Something about this being the last… I came to get a good look at you screaming in terror.”

: “Indeed? That does sound like something worth witnessing. I believe I’ll stay around to observe as well.”

: Just wait until you see Brown’s version of this scene. This entire end sequence is all about dunking on Mark.

: “That dick! He’s always doing stuff like this!”

: “What’re you laughing about? Look, there’s no way I’m going! Forget it!”

: Somehow, Maki magically cures her anime disease. I think it’s a cop-out, personally. There’s a similar character in Persona 3 (the death s-link) who doesn’t magically get cured.

: “It seems Masao is cancelling today’s plans. Such a pity.”

: “Huh? How come? I was really looking forward to it…”

: “Nanjo, you evil…!”

: “Heh heh heh…”

: “Is he telling the truth, Masao?”

: “N-no way… um… I’m… I’m goin’.”

: “Heh… looking at Maki now, what happened before is like a bad dream.”

: “Heh. Pandora, eh…?”

: “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking about all that.”

: They then leave for what is presumably Tokyo Destiny Land from SMT 1, where Jihei re-aligns himself to Chaos to escape Maki.

: I find it weird that they included this here when roughly half of these characters are people we’ll only meet in Snow Queen. I guess if you played Snow Queen first (like I did) it’d make more sense.

: I don’t quite understand what the point of this particular cutscene is, but whatever.

: After the cutscene, we get these “where are they now” info cards. These are, as far as I can tell, only questionably canon. What happens is that in Persona 3, Trish (the fairy who runs the healing springs in the dungeons) becomes a talk show host and interviews most of the Persona 1 cast. This is how we know that Persona 1 takes place in 2006 and not 1996. What I’ll do is post what we do know about each character from P2 and P3 in a side update (along with the alternate versions of the ending scene) in a second update.

: Mark has some fucking freakish body proportions.

: Nanjo’s is also extremely non-canon.

: Anyway, I’d like to thank everyone for reading and posting in the thread. We’re done with the SEBEC route! Now I can move on to… wait… what do you mean I still have to do Snow Queen? Next time, we’ll start Snow Queen and see what would happen if the SMT 1 designers actually got their way. Anyway, one last piece of music to post:

[SpammyV]

“I hope you still think about me at least once in a while”

If I just saw a weird blobby monster you with your face coming out of a stalk and another neck that’s got a butt over a mouth split open and a butterfly you comes out I’d be trying pretty hard not to think about that for the rest of my life, sorry.

[Timrod]

: Okay, let’s do the alternate party scenes for the ending first. First up is Elly’s version. I’ll assume we’re staying Formal Elly so this flows better.

: “Is that so? Oh, my… hee-hee!”

: “Tsk… people do like to talk, but nothing’s noisier than girls gossiping.”

[Jihei and Mark enter here]

: “Sorry, guys… man, that was hell. Jihei and me lost our second buttons on the way here! Those girls were all over us… we had to surrender the buttons to survive.”

: I’m not entirely sure what he’s talking about, probably some kind of Japanese cultural thing.

: “There were a bunch of people looking for you too, Nanjo.”

: " ‘A wise man never courts danger.’ Use your head, man."

: “Yeah, yeah, if you say so…”

: “It must be difficult for you all, being so popular…”

: “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re hanging out with us next!”

: “Let’s go! Time waits for no man, you know.”

[Maki and Elly leave the diner.]

: “Aw man, there they go. Heheh… looking at Maki now, that mess before seems like a bad dream.”

: “Heh. Pandora, eh…?”

: “Man, you’re still stuck on that?”

: “Oh, it’s nothing. I just remembered the last thing in Pandora’s box…”

: “Well then, Mark, shall we go?”

[Nanjo leaves the diner.]

: “Wait a sec, did you just call me Mark? Hey!”

: Next up is Ayase’s version. With hers, I haven’t seen a video of it, but I assume it takes place with her and Maki already at the diner. Judging from the first couple of lines, I assume she’s talking with Maki.

: “Seriously !? Jihei!? That’s totally awesome!”

: “Huh… Jihei I could see, but Masao?”

: “Remember the promise, Jihei? We’re gonna ride the freefall 10 times! Over and over until we hurl!”

: That’s seriously all that’s in the script. I assume that Nanjo and Mark never show up.

: Finally, we’ve got Brown’s. I’ve been saving this one. I haven’t seen a video of this one either, but I assume everyone but Brown and Maki is already at the diner.

: “Hey, looks like Mr. Smellypants is here.”

: “Heheh… laugh it up, chump. Today’s the last day you get to call me that!”

: “You’re not too fond of heights, are you Massy? Or should I say, Mr. Dampcrotch?”

: “What the – who told you that, you bastard!?”

: “Mwahaha… your mom gave me every last detail! My, my, how shameful for a sixth-grader!”

: “That stupid cow! Can it, okay? It’s better than crapping your pants in junior high!”

: “Well technically, sixth grade’s part of junior high, too… heheheh.”

: “I’m gonna get a good look at a return performance by Mr. Dampcrotch today!”

: “Those nitwits! Where do they think they are!? Ugh, they give me a headache.”

[Jihei and Maki enter.]

: “Sorry to keep you waiting! Huh…? What’s wrong, guys?”

: “Jay! Maki! Perfect timing. Mark here wanted to tell you how excited he is to ride the freefall!”

: “Ooh, really? Then let’s get going!”

: “Hidehiko, you dick!”

: “Heeheehee…”

: “What’s wrong? C’mon, let’s go! Chisato and the others are waiting outside!”

: “Hidehiko…! I’ll get you!”

: “Man, I can’t wait to see this!”

: The rest of the ending from this point on is almost identical to Reiji’s - including Nanjo doing the thing about Pandora’s box and Brown responding “What’s that supposed to mean?” the same way Reiji did.

: Now I’ll do a brief thing on where each character is at the time Persona 3 starts. In Persona 3, Trish (the healing fairy) has her own talk show that can be seen throughout the game on the TV at the dorm, and does interviews with most of the P1 cast. The reason I’m doing this, by the way, is that if you happen to go on to play Eternal Punishment after reading this LP, you might get really confused for a bit. That’s because Eternal Punishment’s localization (which does not seem that bad otherwise) uses the Americanized names from Revelations: Persona for the P1 characters.

: Maki will return in both versions of Persona 2, where she works as the assistant to a psychiatrist and is presumably going to college to be a therapist. By the time Persona 3 rolls around (which is actually 2009, the same year P2 takes place) Maki is described by Trish as an “excellent therapist”.

: Nanjo will return in both versions of Persona 2 as well, though he has a bigger role in Eternal Punishment than he does in Innocent Sin. He presumably takes over the Nanjo Group before Persona 2 starts, and later forms the Kirijo Group (which will be familiar to anyone who has played P3) which spins off as its own company. Essentially, he becomes the Speedwagon of the early Persona games.

: Reiji will return in both versions of Persona 2, where he’s a salesman who works with another character we’re only going to meet once we do Snow Queen. When interviewed by Trish, she describes him as “a man in his 20s with a sour face” and quickly corrects it to “a handsome salaryman”.

: Elly will return in both versions of Persona 2, but like Nanjo has a much larger role in Eternal Punishment. I can legitimately see people playing EP not understanding that this is even Elly because of how different (and homogenized with Maki and Yukino) she looks. In both versions of P2, she’s started a successful modelling career.

: Brown will return in both versions of Persona 2, where I assume he fuses with some kind of demon representing godawful fashion sense. In P2, he’s a TV presenter and godawful comedian.

: Yukino will return in both versions of Persona 2, but has a much larger role in Innocent Sin. In P2, she’s a photographer working at a teen magazine called “Coolest”, along with the protagonist of Eternal Punishment.

: As for the rest of the cast - Mark and Ayase never show up again. Ayase in fact never even gets a cameo in Persona 3 and is the only member of the P1 cast not to do so.

[Timrod]

: After spending several hours grinding levels, it’s time to get some casino coins. If you’re doing Snow Queen the way we’re going to be doing Snow Queen, you want everyone at Persona Level 21 before going into the school again. This is absolutely key, because once we go into the school, we lose our ability to grind.

: I loaded the save into an emulator, and used that to bypass the casino grind. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to start a game of Code Breaker, and immediately make a save state.

: You then play through Code Breaker using the solver program (or just failing until it shows you what the correct code is) and then reload your state and put the correct answer in. This will win you a gem set plus a MILLION casino coins. Fuck casino grinding.

: We then go back to the point at which the two routes break. I was incorrect on something I said in the SEBEC route - picking the second option does not automatically put you on the Snow Queen route. No, the Snow Queen route is much more complicated.

: First, we need to go to Classroom 2-4. If I remember right, this is one of the classrooms we had to visit to get information on Reiji when we started the SEBEC route.

: If you’ll remember, Devil Boy is Tsutomu, who we met in Maki’s dream world before we fought Tesso. One piece of trivia I think I forgot to mention in the SEBEC route - Tsutomu is actually the nephew of a character called “T-Shirt” Isono from Devil Summoner, which means that technically Devil Summoner (and thus Soul Hackers and the Raidou games) are canon to the Persona universe.

: Next, we need to see Tsutomu himself. If you’ll recall, we met him in the library in the SEBEC route, and that’s exactly where he is in the real world.

: If you’ll recall, Tsutomu in Maki’s dream world was the exact opposite.

: “You know of ‘The Snow Queen’, right? Yes… the fairy tale.”

: I’d like to pause here for just a second. This game came out several years before Frozen did, and The Snow Queen is not particularly popular in the United States (I’d never heard of it when I first played the game). I tried to do a reading of it, but it’s like 19 pages long and my voice started giving out six pages in.

: “It’s the traditional play performed by St. Hermelin’s drama club.”

: The game will eventually give us a plot synopsis, but I’m definitely going to expand on that because the original Hans Christian Anderson story is… something else.

: “Heeheehee… don’t be so hasty. Listen to this… for some reason, The Snow Queen is usually performed while wearing a mask.”

: “Which brings me to my point. In truth, the mask is cursed. The students who wore it while playing the role all died unnatural deaths. Isn’t that interesting?”

: This part is something I’d also like to take just a second to address. The Snow Queen quest implies that Mikage-cho had some weird shit going on even before Kandori built the Deva System. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be because it takes place in the same world as Devil Summoner (which means that SMT-style demons are around) or if it’s supposed to be sort of an early version of the rumor system we’ll see in Innocent Sin.

: Our next stop is the drama club, which is located behind the gym. As it turns out, one of these club members will give you a Rapier for Jihei if you talk to them before starting this whole quest chain. It won’t matter on this route because of how we’re going to be handling it.

: This is a dead end. Next, we need to go to the Student Council room, which is on the second floor near the library.

: What’s funny is that the student council president actually gets an intro box despite not even having a portrait.

: Next stop is the principal’s office. We met Principal Ooishi’s dream world clone in the SEBEC route, but never got to meet the real one.

: Ms. Saeko is the homeroom teacher for all of the main cast, if you’ll recall from the SEBEC route. The principal has an intro box, but it’s the same as it was in SEBEC.

: You can probably tell what we’re going to do next.

: I’m pretty sure that Vice Principal Hanya’s name is supposed to be a play on “Hannya”, a demon/ogress of Japanese legend. Goro Majima has one on his back in the Yakuza games.

: Our final stop before being sent on the Snow Queen route is to the gym. You’ll recall that we saw the old gym in the SEBEC route, but never saw the new one. That door back there is where we’re going.

: That just seems like a really weird place to put a cursed mask. Why they didn’t just burn it or something, I don’t know. Clearly the staff at St. Hermelin are Umbrella Corporation levels of stupid.

: There’s a weird item jingle that plays here that doesn’t play anywhere else in the game. I should mention that the Snow Queen quest was dummied out of Revelations: Persona, but you can still get the mask here via a Gameshark. We’ll talk a little bit about why that is later.

: I actually really like the Snow Queen route because it feels like a late-80s/early-90s horror film.

: “You don’t even know if that really is Maki!”

: An explanation. The police station segment from the SEBEC route is not canon. Also, I’m going to continue calling the protagonist Jihei even though I used the Naoya Toudou name for the Snow Queen file.

: “Omigod, Jihei! Masao’s in big trouble!”

: “Kei was hurt, so Masao, Hidehiko, and Eriko brought him back here.”

: This is the canon version of what happens at the police station. Presumably, Nanjo went by himself to save Mark and got hurt in the process.

: “But then…”

: “Y-Yeah, but…”

: “So he and Maki went outside together? Oh, I have to bring them back!”

: “Wait, Ms. Saeko! If something happens to you, what’ll the gang here do? Let us go instead!”

: You know, I wouldn’t mind doing a sort of B-Game of the SEBEC route with Yukino, Elly, and Brown. I hope someday that if Atlus remakes Persona 1, they add that in.

: “Oh, good point, Yukino! Thanks…”

: “That… that mask! Goodness… I didn’t think it was still lying around here…”

: “It reminds me of my high school days… I wore this mask when I was in a play called ‘The Snow Queen’.”

: Plot synopsis time! I’ll add some stuff as we go along. The demon is described as a hobgoblin in the original story, and he also runs a school of demons.

: The story goes into more detail about why the hobgoblin does it, but the key reason is that he believes that it shows how humanity really looks.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

All who went to the demon’s school- for he kept a school- talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and mankind were really like.

: The demon was clearly a Chaos player, and made the mirror to show anyone who picks the Law route how dumb they look.

: The story goes into a little more depth, describing how the mirror shattered into bits small enough to get caught in people’s eyes and also their hearts somehow, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure if you breathed in a sand-sized piece of glass you’d cough it out almost immediately. The story also describes some of the glass as being used to make windowpanes and eyeglasses.

: This part is actually accurate to the original story, the kids are in fact named Kay and Gerda. The story goes way more in depth on this: they’re both poor and live in houses so close to each other that they can step out of a window and into the house across the street. A key point is that they keep roses, even though they’re in a densely-packed town with no room for a garden.

: The way this happens in the story is kind of unintentionally hilarious. To get how I pictured it in my head, imagine Danny Devito as Frank Reynolds saying this.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

One day Kay and Gerda sat looking at a book full of pictures of animals and birds, and then just as the clock in the church tower struck twelve, Kay said, “Oh, something has struck my heart!” and soon after, “There is something in my eye.”

: The way Hans Andersen depicts Kay’s heart “becoming a lump of ice” is that he starts being snarky. No, seriously.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“Why do you cry?” said he at last; “it makes you look ugly.
There is nothing the matter with me now. Oh, see!” he cried
suddenly, “that rose is worm-eaten, and this one is quite crooked.
After all they are ugly roses, just like the box in which they stand,”
and then he kicked the boxes with his foot, and pulled off the two
roses.

“Kay, what are you doing?” cried the little girl; and then, when
he saw how frightened she was, he tore off another rose, and jumped
through his own window away from little Gerda.

When she afterwards brought out the picture book, he said, “It was
only fit for babies in long clothes,” and when grandmother told any
stories, he would interrupt her with “but;” or, when he could manage
it, he would get behind her chair, put on a pair of spectacles, and
imitate her very cleverly, to make people laugh. By-and-by he began to
mimic the speech and gait of persons in the street. All that was
peculiar or disagreeable in a person he would imitate directly, and
people said, “That boy will be very clever; he has a remarkable
genius.”

: This isn’t exactly how the story goes. What happens is that Kay joins a bunch of older boys who take their “sledges” (which made me stop for a second the first time I tried doing a reading because I thought they were talking about sledgehammers) and tie them to passing horse-drawn carts to ride behind them, almost like a primitive form of wakeboarding.

: Kay winds up tying his sled to the Snow Queen’s, and gets taken away pretty much by accident. The HCA story has a lot of kids being taken by people not for money or anything, but just because they want a kid, because child kidnapping is just fine in HCA’s fantasy worlds. Also, the Snow Queen has a sled pulled by chickens that are made of snow.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

The snow-flakes became larger and larger, till they appeared
like great white chickens. All at once they sprang on one side, the
great sledge stopped, and the person who had driven it rose up. The
fur and the cap, which were made entirely of snow, fell off, and he
saw a lady, tall and white, it was the Snow Queen.

“We have driven well,” said she, “but why do you tremble? here,
creep into my warm fur.” Then she seated him beside her in the sledge,
and as she wrapped the fur round him he felt as if he were sinking
into a snow drift.

: I only added this part because “here, creep into my warm fur” sounds like the start of someone’s tale about getting laid at a furry con.

“Are you still cold,” she asked, as she kissed him on the
forehead. The kiss was colder than ice; it went quite through to his
heart, which was already almost a lump of ice; he felt as if he were
going to die, but only for a moment; he soon seemed quite well
again, and did not notice the cold around him.

: I should mention that if any of this sounds familiar, you might’ve read the Narnia books as a kid. The White Witch in that was based almost directly on the Snow Queen.

: Oh right. The entire reason Kay wants to stay with her is because snowflakes are one of the only things the mirror doesn’t effect, and that property also carries over to the Snow Queen herself (who may or may not be made of snow).

: The synopsis here skips a LOT of shit. Hans Andersen goes off on a lot of side bits. Gerda first assumes that Kay is dead, and tries talking to the sun to confirm it. I’m not even kidding.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

Oh, indeed those long winter days were very dreary. But at
last spring came, with warm sunshine. “Kay is dead and gone,” said
little Gerda.

“I don’t believe it,” said the sunshine.
“He is dead and gone,” she said to the sparrows.
“We don’t believe it,” they replied; and at last little Gerda
began to doubt it herself.

: Gerda then puts on her new red shoes, which she attempts to throw into the river as an offering to get the river to give her Kay back.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“Is it true that you have taken my little playmate away from me?” said she to the river. “I will give you my red shoes if you will give him back to me.” And it seemed as if the waves nodded to her in a strange manner. Then she took off her red shoes, which she liked better than anything else, and threw them both into the river, but they fell near the bank, and the little waves carried them back to the land, just as if the river would not take from her what she loved best, because they could not give her back little Kay.

: Given that this is a magical fantasy world where people can talk to the fucking sun, I have no doubt that it is somehow possible for a river to wear shoes. Anyway, Gerda throws her shoes again, but this time from a boat. The boat starts moving, and carries her to the house of a witch who tries to keep her forever and buries her rosebushes underground because they’d remind Gerda of Kay.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“Oh, how I have been detained!” said the little maiden, “I wanted to seek for little Kay. Do you know where he is?” she asked the roses; “do you think he is dead?”

And the roses answered, “No, he is not dead. We have been in the
ground where all the dead lie; but Kay is not there.”

“Thank you,” said little Gerda, and then she went to the other flowers, and looked into their little cups, and asked, “Do you know where little Kay is?” But each flower, as it stood in the sunshine, dreamed only of its own little fairy tale of history. Not one knew anything of Kay."

: Gerda talking to the flowers is four pages out of the story’s total run time of 19 pages. The flowers are kind of racist in that they describe a “Hindoo woman” throwing herself into a funeral pyre and then go on a bunch of unrelated, YIIK-like bullshit. There is one paragraph here that the writers found very important.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

What do the hyacinths say? "There were three beautiful sisters, fair and delicate. The dress of one was red, of the second blue, and of the third pure white. Hand in hand they danced in the bright moonlight, by the calm lake; but they were human beings, not fairy elves.

The sweet fragrance attracted them, and they disappeared in the wood; here the fragrance became stronger. Three coffins, in which lay the three beautiful maidens, glided from the thickest part of the forest across the lake.

The fire-flies flew lightly over them, like little floating torches. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The scent of the flower says that they are corpses. The evening bell tolls their knell."

: This is important. Remember this, especially the idea of there being three dead girls. Anyway, Gerda then meets a talking crow who takes her to a princess who gives her a new outfit and a carriage and horses and an entire crew of footmen, who are then brutally slaughtered by a group of bandits. Have I mentioned The Snow Queen probably takes place in Norway?

: The bandits are run by an old woman with a beard, and her daughter takes a fancy to Gerda and demands that Gerda give her all of her clothes on pain of being gutted with a knife. The bandit daughter has an entire flock of pigeons and also a captive reindeer she likes to threaten to murder. Gerda finds out from the reindeer where the Snow Queen went.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“What are you saying up there?” cried Gerda. “Where was the Snow Queen going? Do you know anything about it?”

“She was most likely travelling to Lapland, where there is always snow and ice. Ask the reindeer that is fastened up there with a rope.”

“Yes, there is always snow and ice,” said the reindeer; “and it is a glorious place; you can leap and run about freely on the sparkling ice plains. The Snow Queen has her summer tent there, but her strong
castle is at the North Pole, on an island called Spitzbergen.”

: If you’ve ever played Crusader Kings 2, particularly as the Vikings, you’ll know what Lapland is.

: Lapland is a region inhabited by a group of people known as the Sami, which consists of parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Lapland was the English term for it - today it’s called Sapmi.

: Spitsbergen is the largest island in Svalbard, which is an island chain that is considered part of Norway. Svalbard is probably most famous today for being the home of the Svalbard seed vault.

: Anyway, Gerda keeps going and winds up in Lapland, where she meets an old woman who tells her that the Snow Queen is actually in Finland. Gerda then goes to Finland and meets another old woman, who tells her where the Snow Queen’s castle is. Gerda accidentally leaves her boots and gloves behind, and prays so hard that God himself sends angels to massage her feet.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

The snow-flakes ran along the ground, and the nearer they came to her, the larger they appeared. Gerda remembered how large and beautiful they looked through the burning-glass. But these were really larger, and much more terrible, for they were alive, and were the guards of the Snow Queen, and had the strangest shapes. Some were like great porcupines, others like twisted serpents with their heads stretching out, and some few were like little fat bears with their hair bristled; but all were dazzlingly white, and all were living snow-flakes.

Then little Gerda repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and the cold was so great that she could see her own breath come out of her mouth like steam as she uttered the words. The steam appeared to increase, as she continued her prayer, till it took the shape of little angels who grew larger the moment they touched the earth. They all wore helmets on their heads, and carried spears and shields.

Their number continued to increase more and more; and by the time Gerda had finished her prayers, a whole legion stood round her. They thrust their spears into the terrible snow-flakes, so that they shivered into a hundred pieces, and little Gerda could go forward with courage and safety. The angels stroked her hands and feet, so that she felt the cold less, and she hastened on to the Snow Queen’s castle.

: This isn’t what happens in the story - not quite. She does cry on him and melt his heart, but then invokes the power of Christ to make him cry.

: The story goes further, because Hans Andersen was a fucking weirdo. First, Gerda runs into the reindeer who carried her to the castle, who invites them to drink milk from his pregnant wife.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

When they arrived at the bush with red berries, there stood the reindeer waiting for them, and he had brought another young reindeer with him, whose udders were full, and the children drank her warm milk and kissed her on the mouth.

: Then they go back to the Finnish woman, who somehow knows how to get them back home. They meet the robber’s daughter, who tells them the crow that got Gerda in to see the princess is dead and his wife is in a terrible depression. Then they go back to grandma, who recites the Bible at them. THEN they live happily ever after.

: Well, that was a fucked-up story. I see why they never talk about it, and now I’ll probably never be able to watch Frozen (not that I ever have) without imagining a dipshit reindeer going “Hey kids, wanna nurse from my pregnant mate?”

: “Yes, but some say it’s cursed. I guess I can see why. It’s because of this that my friend was…”

: “C-C’mon, Ms. Saeko! Cut it out! We’ve got enough to be scared of… that mask gives me the creeps! Why don’t you just throw it away?”

: “Oh, sorry about that! It’s just a silly school legend. ‘Whoever wears it, dies’? Ha!”

: “I wore it, and I’m okay, aren’t I?”

: “See? So it’s better if I went looking for those two!”

: Why would you do that!?

: “Ms. Saeko!? What’s wrong!?”

: “Wh-What’s going on!?”

: I got this on stream, but there’s a sort of very quick before-and-after effect. Think that one scene at the end of The Day After Tomorrow, then don’t because that movie was trash.

: “Huh? Uh… where am I?”

: Oh shit, we’re in Finland! Nobody talk to the fucking reindeer!

: Or it’s the school courtyard.

: “Whoa! Look!”

: “Ms. Saeko!”

: Ms. Saeko starts putting up giant ice spears, which are actually a clever bit of asset re-use. These ice spears are recycled from the animation for Bufula, the second-tier single target ice spell.

: “Ms. Saeko…?”

: “Saeko? Oh… I see what’s happening.”

: “Poor Saeko… hahahah.”

: “Huh? But you are Saeko! Are you okay!? Did you trip and hit your head or something?”

: “Hahaha… “I wore it, and I’m okay”, eh? Teeheehee… Ahahaha! That’s the Saeko I remember so well.”

: “What’s wrong with you!? Stop with the jokes, 'cause they aren’t funny!”

: “Jokes? Look around you. Hahaha… you think this is a joke? Beautiful, isn’t it? A peaceful, perfectly still landscape.”

: She’ll give you some turkish delight if you jump in her sleigh! I’ve actually had turkish delight, got it from a bodega near where I work. It’s like grandma candy covered in powdered sugar. You pretty much can’t eat it without looking like you just dove nose-first into a mountain of coke. It’s… okay I guess. Not my favorite.

: “What are you saying!? You’re our teacher! This is just…”

: “Oh, what a lovely girl. Hahaha… come closer, girl, and I’ll give you ageless beauty.”

: “Don’t do it, Yuka! It’s the mask… it must have taken her over!”

: This? This is why Yukino is the best character in this game, tied with Elly. I personally think that as stupid as the premise for this part of the game is, it’s AMAZINGLY written. There’s a very good reason that Atlus re-used a lot of the concepts from here for Persona 3. Also, fuck the manga for not showing this part.

: The manga glosses over Snow Queen in all of like three pages, and changes it so that the Snow Queen is a sixth (or is that seventh?) Maki that wears the same mask we saw her wear in the Inner Lost Forest in the SEBEC route. Snow Queen would’ve made a more interesting fucking manga on its own than the dumb bullshit they came up with for the SEBEC route, and this is why I hate it when people say that Persona 1 isn’t worth playing and you should just read the manga.

: “Who put it on without thinking twice? Not to mention… isn’t it rude to go around calling people monsters?”

: I think my favorite thing about this is how the Snow Queen is an actual villain who feels like she wouldn’t be out of place in Persona 4.

: “Hahahaha!”

: By the way, you’ll notice that the Snow Queen doesn’t call herself that until now.

: Yukino is having exactly none of her bullshit and I love it.

: “What a reckless young lady. Your teacher is going to be… a sacrifice.”

: “A…a sacrifice?”

: “Yes, that’s right. Saeko is so full of hope. If I offer her as a sacrifice…”

: “Huh…? Does that mean everyone’s gonna get frozen? I hate being cold!”

: “That’s not gonna happen! I’m taking back Ms. Saeko, right now!”

: “Well, aren’t you brave? Fine… you can have her. But Saeko will stay frozen as long as she has this mask on. So will the school.”

: Naturally, the Snow Queen pulls an Aki on us and stops us from leaving the school. This is why we couldn’t enter the school once we got back from the police station in the SEBEC route.

: “There’s no escape. You only have two choices…”

: “Welcome the Eternal Night, or take the mask off Saeko.”

: Okay, so what you’re saying is that we need to take the mask off and be free? Find ourselves in the debris? Feed our anger like fire?

: “Okay, but like, how do we do that?”

: “Hahaha, keep fighting it. Nothing’s more beautiful than despair after a struggle.”

: This is the part where we find out that Ms. Saeko’s surname is Enoshima and she’s being taken over by Junko. Weirdly enough, Ms. Saeko does have a canon surname: it’s Takami.

: “Hey! I asked you a question!”

: I could absolutely see this being remade to actually take place in 2009 and Yukino going “Seriously what the shit is your deal? First you’re Junko Enoshima, now you’re some kind of wannabe Jigsaw! Get your fucking shit straight!”

: “A game!?”

: Those towers are Hypnos, Nemesis, and Thanatos, and they form the three major dungeons for the Snow Queen quest. Remember that part from the story where it talked about the three dead maidens? I wonder if that’s got something to do with it…

: And now we start getting into the meat of why Snow Queen is so fucking hard. Two words: time limits.

: “I’ll turn Saeko and the school back to normal. I must leave this mask now and prepare to call down the Eternal Night.”

: However, there’s a second twist to Snow Queen which is going to make things even harder.

: “I hope you enjoy yourselves while I’m gone. Hahaha… I’ll see you later.”

: “This is all your fault, Jihei! If you never found that stupid mask, this wouldn’t have happened!”

: “You better own up! Are you a man or not!? Say something!”

: “Stop it, Yuka! Pointing fingers won’t help the situation any.”

: “It’s not like Jihei knew what was gonna happen.”

: The screen flashes a few times here.

: Oh look, it’s our old buddy, Jangly Keys Man, he of the white subtitles.

: “That thing again…”

: “Huh…? “Again”?”

: Ayase hasn’t actually met Philemon yet. In fact, we’ve never seen her Persona. I should mention that this cutscene was the one they dubbed for Revelations: Persona before scrapping Snow Queen to meet the holiday deadline. You can watch that here.

: “A moment, please.”

: “You are angry and frustrated.”

: “But that will not rescue your teacher.”

: “There is only one way to do that…”

: “The Demon Mirror.”

: “It can remove the source of the mask’s curse.”

: “However, the Snow Queen has shattered it.”

: “The twelve shards are scattered amongst three towers.”

: “Take this mirror frame with you.”

: “Fit the mirror shards you find into it.”

: “If you gather enough shards to reflect your teacher…”

: “She can be saved. There isn’t much time left. I pray for your success.”

: “Umm, Yukino? You know the towers are guarded by demons, right? Aren’t we a little, y’know, shorthanded?”

: “You can stay here if you want. We won’t force you to come, not when we don’t know what we’re up against.”

: “Uh, no, I meant, it’s just…”

: “I’ll do whatever it takes to save Ms. Saeko. I used to be a lousy delinquent. Even my parents gave up on me… but not her. She never gave up on me. Ever.”

: “Now it’s my turn to help her, and my… expertise can be put to a good cause.”

: “Hey, Yukino… you’re not planning on leaving me here all alone, are you? 'Cause I’m going with you! I feel much safer around you and Jihei.”

: “Haha, sure… whatever floats your boat. If we get stuck in a bad situation, I’m sure you’ll help lighten the mood.”

: “Kei gave it to me. Him and Masao went to the police station for some weapons. But Kei got hurt, so they came back to school.”

: “He handed me some guns and said to hold on to them while he went to the nurse… so I kept one for myself!”

: “Hehehe… I always wanted to try shooting one of these things!”

: “…”

: “Gah! The wind’s picking up! Brrr, it’s cooooold… my ears hurt! C’mon, let’s go inside, quick!”

: “Yeah, standing here won’t do anyone any good.”

: “I dunno, maybe we should grab a couple more people, like Yuka said.”

: “Sure, sure, but let’s get inside! I’m freezing to death here!”

: Next time, we’ll find Elly and Brown, fight a giant penis, do a bunch of fusions, and then… well, you’ll see.

[LaZodiac]

Limited to two party members in a dungeon that spams charm.

Yup. That’s Shin Megami Tensei! How the fuck did this series get popular?

It REALLY sucks that Yamaoka is a bad persona because that’s actually really cool, in a sense, that this rich idiot fucker… wants to be as cool as his butler, who died saving him.

So… was Philemon meant to be Kandori at the end there? Because I don’t recognize this generic old man.

I think the point of that final CG is meant to be closure for both arcs. “Here are all your Snow Queen friends, and the compact that Maki chose”.

And now… Snow Queen time. Oh boy!

God, maybe it’s just me, but this immediately seems way more interesting.

[Timrod]

I’m pretty sure that Philemon is supposed to look like an older version of Jihei, but they didn’t do a great job getting that across. One of the ideas behind Philemon is that he can look like pretty much whatever he wants to look like, but Innocent Sin establishes an idea that I think works way better than it does in Persona 1. I won’t spoil that scene because it’s at the very end of IS and I’m definitely doing Innocent Sin right after we finish Snow Queen.

Snow Queen is definitely more interesting because it drops you right in to the action. I’m pretty sure that at one point, Snow Queen was intended to be the first half of the SEBEC route: you’d do Snow Queen and then Maki’s dream world was the end-game. I don’t know why they changed it, other than that maybe they figured that setting up the Snow Queen as a major villain only to have her basically be a mid-boss (with Kandori as the actual villain) didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

[LaZodiac]

Yeah that’s what I figured based on how it’s presenting itself, honestly? Like, it reminds me of P4/5 (and some of P3) where there’s a handful of episodic villains/dungeons you take care of, that all tie into a metaplot.

Also hearing you’re doing IS after this is great, I stalled out in the middle of my own playthrough and I wanna see how that game goes.

[SpammyV]

Because I am an unimaginative child of the 90s I can only think of one thing as you keep talking about evil masks possessing people, but since I possess just enough knowledge of the Persona series to believe anything I’m now wondering if The Mask can’t be canon in the Persona universe.

[Timrod]

: Once we re-enter the school, everything shifts around the way it did in the SEBEC route. The main difference is that the entire school is now on one floor and all of the shops (including the ones normally in the malls) are here as well.

: I’m posting the PS1 theme because the PSP one is exactly the same just redone with a generic electric guitar soundfont and it feels like they tried to shove a Megaman stage theme into an RPG.

: The Ice Castle is a giant maze akin to the malls from SMT 1, only there’s no random encounters here. There’s some optional dialogue here that might be important.

: Right across from the Drama Club is the Fencing Club, which holds the door to Hypnos Tower. Hypnos Tower is the first of the three towers, and contains enemies that stretch in range from roughly the SEBEC building to the end of Maki’s version of the school.

: We can also meet the Xbox Kid over here. He’s gonna show them online. Tadashi only has a portrait because he’s the grandson of the guy who runs the healing item store in the Joy Street mall.

: Class 2-1 has the door to Thanatos Tower. Thanatos Tower is the hardest of the three towers, with enemies ranging from the Haunted Mansion to the end of Deva Yuga. I mentioned earlier that Snow Queen has a twist to it, and this is what it is.

: The game marks the dungeon entrances on the map for you. Anyway, the twist to Snow Queen is that Snow Queen is non-linear - you can start with any of the three towers. The hardest route is doing Thanatos first.

: Our first real stop should be the Library, which contains the door to Nemesis Tower. Nemesis Tower has enemies ranging from the Mikage-cho Subway to the initial visit to the Lost Forest. Elly is here, and we want to recruit her.

: Anyway, let’s talk about the Thanatos First route, because that’s what we’re doing. Thanatos First is known for being an incredibly difficult challenge, and is probably the hardest thing you can do in any of the Persona games. I’d put it on par with SMT 1 or SMT 2 in terms of difficulty.

: The only real guide that exists for starting it was written by a guy who went through it on the Japanese PS1 version. I’d like to just quote what he says about it.

Since the Thanatos Tower is quite possibly one of the most difficult dungeons in any RPG, period, a lot of Japanese Persona fansites say that being able to complete the maximum Ambrosia route makes you a bona fide “Persona Master”.

: Thanatos Tower is a kick in the dick, but only if you choose to do it first. The reason for this is that there’s a fourth dungeon called Devil’s Peak in which you can encounter all of the enemies from all of the towers. Devil’s Peak has no time limit, so you can grind as much as you want… but it won’t open up until you’ve cleared at least one tower. Doing Thanatos first means that you have everything you’ve grinded before going back to the school and nothing more.

: The reward for doing Thanatos first is that you get five Ambrosia items once you finish your third tower. Ambrosia can be traded for the items needed to summon the ultimate Personas. This is kind of a punch to the gut because without extreme grinding in Devil’s Peak you are unlikely to ever reach the level you’ll need to be to fuse them (and as the SEBEC route shows, they’re not remotely worth it.) Doing Hypnos first gets you two Ambrosia, and doing Nemesis first gets you three.

: I’m going to upload my save file at the end of this update, so that if you want to try doing this yourself, you can. The save file will have everything you need (in fact, you’ll be better off than when I did this the first time) to finish it.

: “…”

: “I’m sorry… but I came up empty. None of the books mention this kind of thing at all.”

: “Oh… is that so? Then I’ll keep up my own search. I’m very intrigued by this door…”

: “Nemesis? Hmm… Greek, you say? Iiiinteresting.”

: “Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution.”

: “Hey, Tsutomu knows tons about the occult and demons and stuff. Wouldn’t he be pretty useful? Someone like him would be a big plus, I think.”

: I wish Tsutomu was playable, because I’d be willing to throw out Ayase for him.

: “Whaaaaat!? I don’t wanna sound mean, but… he’s not my type. I say no.”

: “That’s your idea of ‘not being mean’? Who cares whether he’s your type!?”

: “Though I gotta admit… he looks more than a little flaky.”

: “Hmm… you know, she does seem to know about that stuff. Yeah, that could work.”

: “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard my name come up.”

: “Oh, we were just saying you probably know a lot about demons. Here’s what’s going on…”

: Here’s the other thing I like about Snow Queen. Yukino actually thinks about the people we’re taking along. Everyone in the SEBEC route we basically took because they were available.

: “Ahh, so that’s how the school became encased in ice. Fascinating…”

: “I love stories of monsters and ghosts, but this… I never imagined I’d witness multiple supernatural events, one after another.”

: We are absolutely taking Elly. We could take Nanjo, who is… I think in the nurse’s office… but I think we’ve all had enough of him.

: Class 1-1, which is right across from the library, has the door to Devil’s Peak in it.

: Nearby is the casino, where we’re going to spend all those casino coins we have left (I blew about 600,000 of them for crappy weapons that I sold for cash) on tablets.

: The blogger recommends you buy an Evil Fire Tablet (Maragidyne), an Evil Ice Tablet (Mabufudyne), a Flash Tablet (Maziodyne) and two Scorching Tablets (Megidolaon). I did this on my first run, but then after doing SEBEC I realized that Megidolaon does twice the damage that any of the elemental ma-dyne spells do.

: Since we’re loaded with casino coins, I decided to buy the recommended loadout, but then also bought four Scorching Tablets and a Gale Tablet (Mazandyne). As far as I know, none of the enemies in Thanatos Tower can reflect Nuclear damage, and Mazandyne is largely there as a backup in case Megidolaon fails.

: Once we’re done with that, or next stop is the cafeteria. Apologies for the weird lines, I got this shot just as a text box was coming up.

: “Just please don’t eat any more! You’re gonna waste it all!”

: Meet Toro. You only really see him on the Snow Queen route, although you can meet him if you search around the school before heading to the hospital.

: “Nooo! Our precious, precious food! One guy goes crazy from rejection and we all starve to death now?”

: “How can my charmed life end this way!? Croaking alongside a fatso…”

: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

: “Y-Y-Y-Y- YOU SAID THE F-WORD! DON’T CALL ME FAT!”

: “DAMN YOU ALL! I’m gonna eat and eat and eat before I die! I’ll stuff myself! Then I’ll watch the rest of you collapse one by one!”

: Persona games are never kind to fat people. The entire SMT series has had a problem with this kind of thing, in addition to xenophobia and a bunch of other stuff. I’d really like to see them work on this kind of shit in Persona 6.

: “D-Don’t ask me! Man, Yuka, this is all your fault for rejecting him!”

: “Excuse me!? What’s with blaming me for this all of a sudden!?”

: “Only one thing to do… knock the poor bastard out cold.”

: Philemon is a dick. I like that he doesn’t just give everyone in the school a Persona (which would probably allow them to crush the Snow Queen) but makes a point of giving Toro one.

: “I’m not just a butterball anymore, Yuka! Ahahahahahahaha!”

: “Uh… a demon? Wow, sounds like his mind snapped along with his heart.”

: “What!? Does he mean a Persona…?”

: “I don’t think he’ll come to his senses without a swift kick in the butt.”

: “Who’re you calling “Boss”!? Tch, you’re such a clown…”

: “Sure, I’ll try that if nothing else works.”

: If this was Nanjo, he’d already have a gun pointed at Toro’s head.

: “For now, let’s buy us some time until the teacher gets here! Hey Hidehiko, you listening? Quit standing around and give us a hand!”

: “Mwahahaha… I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth!”

: “Toro, why’re you doing this!? You’re like, making me look like the bad guy here!”

: “Ahhh, my darling Yuka! I’ll save you, and only you… if you promise to go out with me. I’ll even save you some food! Ahahahahahah!”

: “Uh-uh. No way. Not in a million years.”

: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

: “DAMMIT! DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT! I’M… I’M… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

: “Eh, not really. I just told him the truth. All I said was like…”

: I don’t even know why anyone wants Ayase.

: “Y-Y-Yuka… um… um… I’m, um, I’m sorry for, um, asking you to meet me here.”

: “Geez, speak up already! If you’re not saying anything, I’m out. Seeya!”

: “W-Wait! There is something! I’ll tell you right now… are you ready?”

: “Like, spit it out already! I got people waiting on me!”

: I get what they were going for, but god, this dialog is just…

: Now he’s going full on Ralph Wiggum. You can actually pinpoint the moment where his heart breaks in two.

: pant pant

: “Alright, I’m out. Laters.”

: “Why not? What’s so bad about me?”

: “Let’s see, you’tre fat, slow, wear the same clothes every day, laugh at everything, and I’ve never seen you do anything but eat, sleep, and read manga.”

: “I like, don’t get what keeps you going. Everything about you sucks!”

: “H-How can you be so mean…?”

: “Well, what do YOU like, Yuka? You laugh when you aren’t happy, you hang out with people you think are stupid… are you scared to be alone?”

: Dude, Ayase’s such a basic bitch that if you get her wet, you can use her to clean the floors.

: There is one upside to this, and that’s that Toro comes back in Persona 2. I’m pretty sure he’s married in that.

: “Quick, apologize! It’s not too late! Say you’re sorry!”

: Honestly, if I were Jihei, I’d probably ditch Ayase and pick up Toro. Ayase is, as you’ll see shortly, the worst party member by the numbers. She is the Mark of this route.

: “I did? Really!? Uh, did the truth really hurt that bad, Toro?”

: sob “My darling Yuka… how could you…?”

: “You’ll pay for stomping all over my pure, innocent heart… Mr. Demon! Oh, Mr. Demon! Come out! Come out and punish the people who keep making fun of me!”

: Meet Toro’s Persona. The wiki claims that there’s some kind of Japan-only info CD that came out with the PS1 release which states that his Persona is named Akuma. There’s a dumb kanji thing going on here where Akuma is the Japanese Buddhist way of spelling the name of Mara, everyone’s favorite giant green penis. The word “Akuma” is also used to describe evil spirits that use fire.

: “What a bone-head! Can’t even hit with his own fire spells!”

: “Boy, he really cocked that one up!”

: “Hitting a fire-based Persona with fire? I’d call that a half-cocked understanding of the element system!”

: We already saw Nemhain back in the police station, albeit briefly.

: “Kid, that’s called premature ejaculation!”

: With that, everyone is level 21 and Persona level 22. Yukino is going to be the Reiji of this run, while Brown and Ayase will be the Mark and Nanjo.

: “Nocturnal emissions, or did he shit his pants again? That’s for you to decide.”

: “What in the world was that…?”

: “They don’t seem to be hostile; at least, not for now.”

: “Looks like our little squad’s getting bigger.”

: “Uh…squad?”

: “Huh? You mean you and Jihei are like, you know… and stuff?”

: “For some reason, only those who dreamed of the butterfly acquired the power. It also seems related to the demon invasion somehow…”

: “Wait a sec, Toro was using a Persona, right? Did he have that dream, too?”

: “Yes, that’s the most likely explanation.”

: “Omigod! I don’t believe it! No… no, it can’t be!”

: “Lady, you’re so basic you’d give me chemical burns if I stood too close! Gimme a break.”

: “Er… I don’t think so. It’s all in how you use it. Take a knife, for example.”

: “It can be a valuable tool in the kitchen, or a weapon on the battlefield. What it does is determined by its user.”

: “Alright… I should be fine then.”

: “Oh, duh! I know exactly what that butterfly wants me to do!”

: “Haha, alright. If you guys really need me thaaat much… I guess I can pitch in. Follow my lead!”

: “Well, if he wants to come, fine with us.”

: “Y-Yes, Boss!”

: And with that, we’ve got our party assembled. Next thing to do is start fusing Personas. I’m not going to get into Thanatos Tower this update, mostly because there’s a good chance I’m going to need to start it over (possibly multiple times).

: The first and most important thing we want to do is wait for a new moon. There’s a mechanic (which I stumbled upon in the SEBEC route without realizing it) that we’re going to want to exploit specifically for Thanatos Tower.

: The mechanic works like this. There’s no official name for it, but the wiki with the Thanatos first guide calls it “hidden potential”. Basically, hidden potential happens based on two things: the moon phase and what order of demon you have in the second fusion slot.

: What we’re looking for is the hidden potential ability that auto-revives on death, but puts the Persona back at Rank 1. Losing all our ranks on any of the Personas we’re making here is not a big deal, since their best spells will be from the tablets and are automatically learned at Rank 2 (which only requires using the Persona once).

: To get this, you need to fuse on a New Moon. The guide claims that Hidden Potential can only activate when a Persona has Best compatibility with its user and is also at Rank 6 or higher.

: I’m posting the exact fusion settings I used so that if you use my save file (which I’ll upload at the end of this post) to do this yourself, you know what to do.

: Yukino gets Janus. Janus is great for everything except his extremely high SP cost.

: Ayase gets Urvashi, who is made from Nacht Kobold and Pixie.

: As a Persona, Urvashi is merely okay. I gave her Mabufudyne rather than Mazandyne because I realized that there’s one or two enemies that null and/or reflect “force” (electric, nuclear, gravity, blast) as a whole.

: Finally, we fuse Fuutai for Elly, and Ame no Uzume for Brown. I Personalogged Ame no Uzume in the SEBEC route, and couldn’t do the same for Fuutai as he has no official art and I couldn’t find any information on him.

: I also returned Seimen Kongou for a Strength Incense.

: You heard him. Part of what makes Snow Queen so hard (at least, at first) is that you can’t leave any of the dungeons until the boss is dead. Once you do, you can never go back - meaning if you miss some of the mirror shards you could potentially lock yourself out of the ending.

: Next time, we’ll take on Thanatos Tower and witness just how hard this run is even when you know what you’re doing. I’ll post my save in the first post when I start the next update, since taking the PSP off the dock is way more of a pain than you’d think.

[LaZodiac]

@Ayasa said

wear the same clothes every day

YOU HAVE SCHOOL UNIFORMS YOU STUPID TART.

Man Ayase is rude.

@Timrod

There is one upside to this, and that’s that Toro comes back in Persona 2. I’m pretty sure he’s married in that.

He is and from what I’m reading he also rules kicks ass in that game (relatively speaking).

… wow that is some restrictions on how you do these towers. Talk about brutak.

[Timrod]

: Welcome to Thanatos Tower. Rest assured that as soon as we go through that door, we are going to start getting punched in the stomach, and it’s not going to stop.

: It’s kind of dark even on the actual PSP’s screen, but you’ll notice that there’s two candles near that door. This is Thanatos Tower’s first gut punch, and we haven’t even entered the tower yet.

: I thought Yuriko was supposed to be a reference to a character by the same name in SMT 1 (and later SMT 4) but as it turns out she’s named after a Japanese voiceactress who has mostly had minor roles in a lot of magical girl anime. Strangely, the real Yuriko Yamamoto has never done anything in any of the Persona or SMT games.

: God dammit, Brown.

: “…Ugh! I got carried away… Who the heck are you!?”

: “Oh. My. God. You look, like, SO dumb. Who do you think you are, weirdo?”

: “Ohh! Are you jealous 'cause I’m so cutesy-wutesy?”

: SHOOT HER, JIHEI! SHOOT HER! Oh right, we don’t have guns, and even if we did they’d be useless. I quote the guide where it says “Do not buy any guns in the Ice Castle, they will work like declawed kitty scratches against the enemies in Thanatos Tower.”

: sigh “…Being too pretty is a sin, isn’t it?”

: “Sorry 'bout that! Ahahaha!”

: “Is it a battle you seek? We’d have no objections to that.”

: “Aww, don’t talk like that, guys! I’m just here to tell you how to open the door back there. So put your listening hats on!”

: As you can tell, Yuriko is a colossal bitch.

: “Well, uh… this is definitely a trap. But that girl… Yuriko, right? I get the feeling she’s tougher than she looks.”

: This is Thanatos Tower’s first kick in the dick. There is no indication as to what these candles do, but they tie into the tower’s main gimmick. Normally, guides will suggest that you blow out the right-side candle. On my first, failed run I blew out the one on the left on purpose. In fact (and this is how you know I’m still recording as I work on the update) I’ll probably do this for the successful run.

: “Teeheeheeheeheehee!”

: “Did you really think you could get past here for free? Silly billies!”

: “Tit for tat’s the name of the game!”

: “If you want anything in this tower, you gotta give something up in return! Life is hard, huh?”

: Yuriko has just permanently stolen all of Jihei’s Personas. If we put out the other candle, she’d take Yukino’s instead. This is a tactical decision on my part, for reasons I thought would work and still kinda do. We can get Lilim back, but it won’t be easy.

: Anyway, let’s talk to our party.

: No! No she isn’t! What happened to you, Brown? You used to be cool!

: “What frightens me is that I can’t tell what Yuriko is thinking… it seems as if she enjoys our confrontations… and catching us in her traps. It’s as Yukino says - this won’t be easy.”

: “I can’t believe that girl! What a loser! What does she think life’s all about? Who does she think she is!?”

: “Oooooh, she’s so aggravating! Right?”

: Ayase has just met a bitch even more basic than she is. We call this ritual “The Bachelor”, or sometimes “Bachelor In Paradise”.

: Anyway, time for my first failed run. It didn’t fail in that I got a game over, it failed in that I didn’t think things all the way through.

: Two steps in, I get into our first random battle. The first thing we need to do is start negotiating. Eligor (in the back) has an instant death spell and is immune to magic. Here’s what Yuriko doesn’t tell you: if anyone dies in Thanatos Tower, their Persona is also sealed. This is why we wanted to do the hidden potential thing - if your Persona revives you, it doesn’t count as a death.

: Thankfully, we have the negotiation techniques to get rid of him. This will not be true for some later enemies.

: Our goal for this first encounter is to have everyone whose Persona isn’t sealed use their Persona once to unlock Megidolaon.

: Unfortunately, this is where I find out that Phunbaba resists nuclear. It still does a bit of damage (188 from Yukino) but our other party members will barely scratch it. Ayase can’t even cast on it because Phunbaba also absorbs ice.

: Also on this floor are “Zap” and Djinn, both of whom are weak to nuclear. These are pretty safe as long as someone goes before them and nukes them immediately.

: I also forgot to mention what happens if you don’t have a Persona. Basically, if Jihei gets hit by any magic that’s not a damage-over-time (Hama/Mudo and their upgraded counterparts) he will probably get oneshotted as he has a magic defense of 0. This is why I let his Persona get sealed as opposed to Yukino’s. Jihei is fast enough that he can get a physical attack in before anyone else moves, so he’ll at least get more EXP than if he did nothing.

: There’s a door here with a damage floor behind it. The damage floor will hit us for a bit more than it would’ve in Avidya World, but not by much. I also realized I forgot to post the map, so let’s do that.

: I took the damage floor route since it cuts out some walking.

: You’ll also notice this clock on the wall. This is not just for decoration, because Thanatos Tower has a SECOND gimmick that Yuriko doesn’t mention. From the moment you set foot in the tower (past the candle door) you have exactly three hours to clear the dungeon.

: Thankfully, this only counts time you spend in first person. Anything else: menus, battles, save rooms, the map screen, etc do not count toward this time limit. We have no particular reason to grind here anyway, as Devil’s Peak will open up once we clear the tower.

: This is where I realized that the 4-nuke strategy wasn’t going to work. Kuchisake-onna was kind of a footnote at best when we first encountered her in the SEBEC route. Here, though…

: She has Mamudo.

: Mamudo is only an instant kill if your character’s active Persona is an angel, and is otherwise a damage over time spell. However, Ame no Uzume (who I gave to Brown) is very weak to it. Worse, Kuchisake-onna has a fuckload of HP and is very difficult to negotiate with (in that negotiations with her are totally random unless you have Reiji).

: People dying to bad RNG is going to be a consistent theme in this run. I actually stopped and reset here, which was kind of a mistake. The four-nuke strategy is definitely what you’re going to want to use though, for reasons we’ll see from my tenth failed run. Yes, tenth.

: I had about four runs in a row where I got ambushed from behind by enemies I don’t want to be fighting. Arachne in particular is a bitch because like Kuchisake-onna, negotiation with it is random. The best we can do is make it happy and hope it fucks off instead of getting the “the demon snickered!” message that does nothing.

: I also had one run where I ran into this particular encounter ten times in a row. Hi no Enma reflects all magic and is therefore unkillable, and is also completely random to negotiate with.

: It takes me ten attempts to get to the stairs on the first floor. This is how bad the game’s RNG is.

: Fairly early into the second floor is a door we absolutely need to use.

: Welcome to Tartarus, a place you might recognize from Persona 3. This is where my tenth attempt got fucked over.

: “This animal’s trying to stop me? What, does he think he’s a king or something?”

: “He does look strong, though… I know! I’ll strike up a little conversation.”

: “Um… ME MAD. YOU MOVE.”

: “Look, we don’t wanna fight you, okay? We just wanna see what’s through there. Pretty please?”

: Pascal the dog is here! Unlike everything else in this tower, Pascal is a good boy who deserves a treat.

: “Ahaha… the key to the mystery of our lost Persona power may be here. When Yuriko said ‘I’ll take your other life’…”

: “What she meant was that she’d taken away the Persona.”

: This is why we need to go here. Tartarus is where the Personas wind up if someone dies in Thanatos Tower.

: “Taking life means death, after all. And this is apparently where the souls of the deceased gather. Where else could our missing ‘other soul’ be?”

: “You must let us through! Or else…”

: “VERY PERCEPTIVE. YOUR DEDUCTIONS ARE LARGELY CORRECT. YES, YOUR SO-CALLED ‘PERSONA’ IS HERE.”

: “BUT I HAVE NO DEALINGS WITH YURIKO. I GUARD THIS PLACE OF MY OWN WILL. THE LAND OF THE DEAD NEEDS NO INCOMPLETE SOULS. TAKE WHAT IS YOURS.”

: “Sounds good. Then we’ll be on our way. No need to bother you.”

: There’s some alternate party dialogue here if you have Nanjo, but it’s basically exactly what Elly is saying only slightly different. What the hell, I’ll do it anyway.

: “The land of the dead, eh? Mmm… interesting.”

: “With demons running rampant, this tower itself is much like Hell already. There is nothing left for us to fear.”

: “Besides, it may be linked to the loss of our Personas en route. What Yuriko said to us… ‘I’ll be taking your other life’… it implies the lost Persona.”

: “Taking one’s life signifies death, naturally. And here we are, where the souls of the deceased gather. It’s self-evident that our ‘other self’, the Persona, is here!”

: “You’re under orders from Yuriko to bar our path, aren’t you!? I demand you let us through!”

: There’s also some optional dialogue in this room.

: “A Student in the Afterlife, starring Hidehiko Uesugi! Mwahahahahaha!”

: “Wow! I get to visit the underworld while I’m still alive! I’m the luckiest girl on Earth!”

: “The land of the dead, huh? Never thought I’d go there while I was still alive.”

: Welcome to Tartarus. It might not be like you remember it from Persona 3, in that it’s a clone of the bottom floor of Avidya World with a different map.

: Tartarus has all of the Furies in it, along with a bunch of other Greek mythological figures. Yaksini (in the front) is a demon we absolutely must negotiate away. Thankfully, the four-nuke strategy works REALLY WELL in Tartarus because most of the enemies here are weak to Nuclear.

: This fight fucks the party up pretty bad because I tried to negotiate instead of just nuking immediately. Fortunately, we’re already in Tartarus so it’s not a huge deal as long as we don’t Game Over.

: This door here is the one we’re looking for. It’s right at the start of Tartarus, and you almost can’t miss it.

: Interacting with the clones of our party members on the wall gives us their Persona back. This is part of the reason I did the “kill off Jihei’s Persona” strategy. If we had let Jihei keep Lilim, he’d be the only one with any levels at all because of how much faster he is than everyone else. Letting Yukino level up a few times gives us a backup in case Jihei’s Megidolaon misses - which it will.

: The girl in the red here is very important if you want to 100% the Snow Queen route.

: “Good to know you! It’s an unofficial club, and I’m the president and only member!”

: Mariko somehow got trapped in St. Hermelin when it became the Ice Castle, and then negotiated her way into Tartarus.

: “My homeroom teach refuses to recognize my club, just 'cause he thinks it’s lame! So I came to visit Tsutomu, my fellow devotee, but… I… this is…”

: “This is great! I’m SO lucky! I get to see an awesome paranormal event like this! I’ve taken so many pics already! I’m gonna submit these babies to national magazines!”

: “If the media admits they’re real, maybe my teach will recognize my club!”

: “So this is the last time I’m gonna be seeing the underworld! Yep.”

: “I thought this place would be, like, way scarier, but this isn’t so bad.”

: “This place is very different from our common perception of the underworld.”

: As soon as we leave the Persona jail, we run into Tisiphone. Like Hi no Enma and Kuchisake-onna, Tisiphone is a piece of shit.

: Surprisingly, this did not end my run. Jihei survived with just enough HP to megidolaon them all to death.

: One trip to the jail later, we’re back in business and looking at the dark area that covers the central part of Tartarus.

: There’s three treasure rooms to the north of the dark area. This one is shit - it’s got two trap chests and a totem that we’re never going to use.

: That’s not to say that Tartarus doesn’t have some very important treasure rooms. It has three. That one you can see in the top-right is one of them.

: Remember, there’s twelve mirror shards in total. Tartarus alone has four of them, with Thanatos Tower as a whole having two more beyond that.

: Once we get the mirror shard in the northern part of Tartarus, we want to go back through the dark area and go south.

: Pretty much all the optional dialogue in these rooms is your party members going “Hey, don’t run out of time looking for the mirror shards!” The problem is that Thanatos Tower contains six of the twelve mirror shards - you can’t finish the game without picking up at least two.

: We keep on trucking to the next treasure room, seen behind us. Jihei and Yukino are both level 26 at this point.

: Wait, what the fuck?

: I don’t know where she gets the balls to extort us for money, but if we want all the mirror shards we need to buy it.

: It’s on my way to the fourth mirror shard in Tartarus, far to the south, that disaster strikes. Yaksini is what a speedrunner would call “easy every time” - you just use Persuade with Jihei and she’ll instantly fuck off. The problem here is that I got ambushed.

: Before I can even move, everyone but Jihei and Brown is dead.

: I actually cleared that fight, and then got immediately wiped by a group of Tisiphone not even three steps later. Have I mentioned that running from battle has something like a 1% chance of working?

: Anyway, on my next run up, I made it to Tartarus without any deaths. Here’s the key to it, which I didn’t get a screencap of. As it turns out, there IS a way to make Kuchisake-onna (and Arachne) fuck off that works almost every time.

: The trick is that you want to max out both the “Happy” and “Angry” meters without actually finishing the negotiation. Once you do that, the demon will get confused and fuck off.

: So anyway, my… twelfth? run goes great until this happens. Full Moons (along with New Moons) will sometimes cause negotiations to fuck up. Tisiphone spammed Zandyne at everyone and killed everyone but Jihei. This was a pain in the ass.

: We then have to make a third trip from the dark area to find the final mirror shard hidden in Tartarus.

: I figure “Oh hey, my entire party is Persona-less and the prison is right near the start of Tartarus, I’ll just…” and then I find out that Emergency Exits don’t work in any of the Snow Queen dungeons.

: After a minor hiccup involving Ayase getting oneshotted and me having to go back to Tartarus, we reach the stairs to the third floor. Once you’ve made it to the third floor, you’ve basically finished Thanatos Tower.

: The weapon shop here sells the same guns we bought in the Black Market in the SEBEC route. Remember how I said you need 500,000 yen? It’s really more like double that. This is the ONLY opportunity you’ll have to visit this shop, so you want to stock up now.

: Right next to it is an armor store, which sells the best buyable armor in the game. If nothing else, you want the armor from here because it prevents you from getting oneshotted by physical skills (which is what happened to Ayase).

: Anyway, Thanatos Tower has some seriously backwards design. Once you make it past the second floor, a bunch of easy enemies like Yumizome and Zombie Painter show up. I basically stopped using Jihei here because I wanted to level up Yukino.

: Oh, right. Let’s post the map for the second half of Thanatos Tower.

: There’s a few treasure rooms on the way to the stairs, and you will want to stop and hit every single one of them.

: Longinus is an excellent weapon for Brown. Oniguruma is for Yukino, and the Phurba Dagger…

: Goes a long way to fixing Elly’s low agility. Part of the problem with grinding in Thanatos Tower is that really only Jihei and Yukino are going to be doing meaningful damage, mostly because everyone else’s Persona kinda sucks.

: Near the stairs to the fifth floor, I ran into a group of Alastor. These guys are fucking annoying, but thankfully Elly scares them off with a story about a haunted bathroom. I have one of those at work. The doors to the stalls are always locked and people spend all day in there on their phones.

: The rest of the dungeon is honestly not nearly as interesting as the first half.

: On 5F, there’s another clock, and we can see that we’ve used about a quarter of our three hour time limit. I would’ve stayed and grinded a bunch, but the problem is that we need better Personas first.

: The fifth floor reintroduces Incubus, who is just as much of a joke as he was in Deva Yuga. Spam guns, win encounter.

: There’s an optional treasure room here you’re going to want if you have Nanjo, but otherwise is skippable. There’s some good optional dialogue in there though.

: I feel like Chinese take-out (assuming they use the paper cartons) is pretty much the closest you can get to having food in a treasure box. Pizza’s got a box but it’s too easy to open.

: The sixth floor is Thanatos Tower’s final kick in the dick. All of these square rooms have a damage floor in the center, but that’s not it.

: This floor also reintroduces Scylla and Kiyohime, who I saw plenty of in the grind to 60 in the SEBEC route.

: Here it is, the final kick in the dick… assuming you’re not using a guide.

: “It’s bad news, like that room with the candles. You know how they say to let sleeping dogs lie? We should leave these be.”

: "I put together a present just 'cause you guys were trying soooo hard… and you’re gonna walk away just like that? I’m gonna cry… sniffle "

: “A present!? L-Let’s take it, Yukino! No one that pretty can be a cook. True fact!”

: God dammit, Brown.

: “C’mon, we can trust Yuriko!”

: “Huh. Sure, it looks like a trap, but it sounds kinda fun! I don’t wanna chicken out… okay, go ahead and tell us what’s up!”

: “Woo-hoo! I knew you’d get it! I think you and me could be best friends forever! Oh, I’m so happy!”

: “I’m sure you’re up to no good with this so-called “gift”. It’s a waste of time.”

: “Aww, why can’t you be more positive? I know you’re all thrilled! Oh well, I’ll go ahead and explain the gift! Put your listening hat on!”

: Yes. You heard her. If you played this game without a guide (and how the fuck did you get this far if you did) and don’t know which one has the mirror shard, it’s entirely possible you can get fucked out of getting all the mirror shards. I remind you that there’s no saving in Thanatos Tower.

: “And of course, something bad will happen if you open the wrong one. Uh-oh!”

: Naturally, if you pick the wrong one, Ayase gets her Persona stolen AND you get fucked out of the mirror shard.

: “Whee! Sounds fun, huh? Good luck! Teeheeheehee!”

: “Oh, so it IS a trap? Hmm… well, it’s a good chance anyways! We should like, give it a shot! I have a feeling that she’s not lying.”

: “I take full responsibility if anything happens! So let’s crack one open!”

: There’s probably alternate party member dialogue here, but I can’t find it in the script. What we do get is some optional dialogue instead.

: “I dunno why, but it seems like Yuriko is forcing herself to be like this. That’s just how it feels to me.”

: “Yuriko’s toying with our lives and loving every minute of it! I hate her frickin’ guts.”

: “Man, the traps here are evil! This tower’s packed with danger for an honest joe like me! No, seriously.”

: “These traps in the tower… it’s all just a game to her. Each time we make progress, she torments us just enough so as not to kill anyone. She’s even prepared a gift to entice us.”

: “Everything’s been meticulously planned… so that she can kill us herself at the endgame.”

: The one we want is this one, on the left.

: “See? I toldja we should open a chest! Am I right or am I right?”

: "Okey-dokey! You win this game! Congrats!’

: “It’s just a little further to my room, so don’t give up now, 'kay?”

: “I’ll give each of you the bestest death ever! I’ll be waiting!”

: Here we are. Floor 7, the very top of Thanatos Tower. This floor is small and simple.

: “But this isn’t what I was expecting from her cutesy attitude… hey, Yuriko! You know we’re here, right? Hurry up and come on out! Or are you up to something again?”

: “Anyway… you have a really nice face! How 'bout you die here? That way you can keep your looks forever!”

: “If you keep on living, you’ll get older and end up all wrinkly and ugly!”

: Yuriko clearly hasn’t played Persona 2, where Yukino looks way better than her P1 design.

: The Snow Queen route implies that Mikage-cho was kinda fucked up even before Kandori came around, in that the snow queen mask was killing people probably several decades before P1 takes place.

: I’m not sure how old Yuriko is supposed to be, but I assume it’s probably been at least ten or fifteen years since she died.

: “Does that sound great or what? C’mon, we totally should! It’ll be sooo much fun!”

: “I’m super glad I came to this tower, like the Snow Queen’s mask said!”

: The game is basically using that as a euphemism. The manga (which I don’t have access to at the moment) pretty much outright states that Yuriko killed herself under what may or may not have been the mask’s direction.

: “I’ll stay young and pretty forever and ever! But I was getting a little bored, being here all by my lonesome. And I don’t wanna fight you guys, so… whaddaya say?”

: “The Snow Queen’s mask killed you and now you’re the guardian of this tower, huh? Well, if you’re dead now, I guess you won’t get any older, but…”

: “That’s not worth throwing away our lives, our futures, in the real world. Sorry, but I’m gonna have to pass on this ‘eternal beauty’ gig!”

: “Sh-shut up! You guys just don’t understand how it is to be a girl!”

: “We’ll stay pretty… and…”

: “Not one more word! Don’t think for a second that you and me are the same type! You really, and I mean REALLY piss me off!”

: “I would never die just to stay pretty! You know what? You gave up on dying! And growing older! And living your life like a normal person! You gave up on everything you had!”

: “Spot on! That was so cool!”

: “I couldn’t have said it better myself, Ayase! You blew me away!”

: “Now then, Yuriko… since you’ve been rejected by Ayase, the one who could identify with you most… I doubt anyone else here would have time for you! What will you do now?”

: “Well said, Yuka. ‘Even a worm will turn’ indeed.”

: “Give it up, Yuriko. Yuka is most like you of all of us, and you can see she has utterly rejected you.”

: “In other words, no one is buying the nonsense you’re trying to peddle.”

: I kind of wish this canonically took place after SEBEC somehow, so that someone could go “Not even Chisato was that stupid!”

: “I just wanted to have some laughs with everyone! What about that don’t you get? That’s it, no more Ms. Nice Yuriko!”

: “You have no idea how strong I am! Beg for your life if you want – I won’t listen!”

: “I’ll crush you so hard there’ll be nothing left! Not even your soul!”

: "Heh… as Kei would probably say, ‘only death can cure a fool!’ "

: This right here? This is why Yukino is probably my favorite party member in the game, and it is fucking criminal that she didn’t get into the SEBEC route.

: This fight went a lot better than it did when I did Snow Queen the first time. The first time, everyone but Jihei died almost instantly and I just left the game on auto-battle for like twenty minutes.

: The gimmick to the Thanatos fight is that Thanatos has six tentacles. Three of them are extremely weak to Force (electric, nuclear, gravity, blast) but absorb Element (fire, ice, earth, wind). The other three are extremely weak to Element but absorb Force. This is mostly to stop you gunning Thanatos down.

: Thanatos himself is extremely weak to nuclear, and this is where the four-nuke strategy really paid off. The tentacles themselves are inconsequential: they have low accuracy and hit for around 20 damage if they hit at all.

: Thanatos is all about instant death spells. Unfortunately, I didn’t stock up on revival items because I assumed that dying anywhere in Thanatos Tower sealed your Persona off. This is not true of the boss fight - you can revive people and they’ll have their Persona still.

: Eventually, it’s down to just Jihei and Yukino, both on auto casting Megidolaon.

: Once it takes a few thousand damage, Thanatos turns into an eyeball and kills all of its remaining tentacles off. Unfortunately, it managed to kill Yukino, so Jihei had to finish the fight the way my first run went: gunning Thanatos down.

: Elly didn’t even get a level off the boss, but that’s because she died early and her Megidolaon was only doing like 50 damage to Jihei and Yukino’s 250. As a side note, Thanatos gets a pretty significant stat boost and another few thousand health in its first form if you do Thanatos Tower last but is otherwise an identical fight.

: “Or are you gonna go cry to the nice Snow Queen who gave you eternal beauty? What’s it gonna be, huh?”

: “…”

: “I… I don’t… I don’t like the Snow Queen. I really don’t.”

: “I’m glad… it ended like this… I had fun with you guys, I got to talk to you… have a nice battle…”

: “And now… I got beaten… it’s a good thing. That’s right… I’m… human… and humans have to die.”

: “I was so stupid… why didn’t I understand something so easy?”

: “Huh? Geez, are you crying?”

: “Sure, maybe you coulda fooled someone else… but not me! Nnnnope!”

: “I mean, you were all about the Snow Queen, and now you’re saying you don’t like her? Hah! That’s a new one on me!”

: “If you’re gonna lie, try to come up with something better than that.”

: “Can’t you tell!? Ugh, no wonder you still don’t have a girlfriend! You don’t understand girls at all!”

: “And c’mon, Yukino, don’t be so hard on her! Give her a chance!”

: “I wish we’d met and become friends… while I was still alive. To tell you the truth, I was scared.”

: “I used to go hang out with my friends, and we’d go out and have fun…”

: “I had a lot of friends and a lot of guys who said they liked me.”

: No you didn’t! You’re the most basic bitch there is! Queen of the basic bitches!

: “Plus, my mom and dad were really sweet. Every day was fun, and I was so happy…”

: “I thought, ‘it just doesn’t get better than this!’ But then, I got scared…”

: “Am I just gonna grow up, get old, turn ugly… and die…?”

: “I couldn’t shake those questions. I got so scared, I couldn’t sleep at night… that’s when the Snow Queen’s mask I wore in the play spoke to me.”

: "It said, ‘I can help you live forever, exactly as you are now.’ "

: “Before I knew it I was in this tower… and I’ve been here ever since… all by myself…”

: “Mom… dad… my friends… all gone. Just me… I was so selfish!”

: “I was stupid for not wanting to die or grow old! Every human has to!”

: “I felt empty being on my own for so long…! I just wanted to end it all!”

: “I couldn’t stand it anymore!”

: “That’s why… when you guys showed up… I’d finally be able to put an end to this… one way or another…”

: “I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore! That’s why I… I…!”

: “So that overwhelming power that seemed almost unnatural… it came from your unfathomable sadness. The utter loneliness and bottomless grief you felt…”

: “That gave rise to despair far stronger than any of your prior feelings.”

: “I see now, Yuriko, that you too were a victim of the Snow Queen.”

: “But it’s finally over… I can’t thank you enough. Thanks to all of you… I can die… feeling like a human…”

: I think this is supposed to make you feel bad for Yuriko, but I just… don’t.

: That’s six mirror shards. We only need eight to finish the game.

: “I’ll make you pay for toying with people’s lives! Yuriko… we’re doing this for you now, too!”

: Indeed we have. Doing Thanatos Tower first kind of makes the rest of Snow Queen extremely easy up until the very end - everything else is downhill from here in terms of difficulty. Next time, we’ll take on Nemesis Tower and see the unique ways Atlus created to screw you out of getting all the mirror shards.

[LaZodiac]

@Timrod

Yuriko has just permanently stolen all of Jihei’s Personas

What the actual fuck?! God, I imagine that stings a hell of a lot if you do Thanatos last huh. Although it seems from what you say later he might get them back, but still!

@Timrod

From the moment you set foot in the tower (past the candle door) you have exactly three hours to clear the dungeon.

You had vaguely mentioned a time limit last update and uh… this? This right here? Absolute garbage. What the actual fuck. How did games like Persona even exist long enough to get a sequel let alone FIVE. This is actively miserable.

Yukino is already the best character but that line is just… that’s some good shit right there.

Mechanics aside this is clearly way more developed and cool than the SEBEC route, so this has been really interesting to read through, but… god, those mechanics REALLY ARE aside. How is it to actually play, dealing with some of this nonsense?

[Timrod]

@LaZodiac

Mechanics aside this is clearly way more developed and cool than the SEBEC route, so this has been really interesting to read through, but… god, those mechanics REALLY ARE aside. How is it to actually play, dealing with some of this nonsense?

Let me just start by saying that as bad as Thanatos Tower is, it’s really not as bad as it could’ve been. I’m amazed the map designer didn’t put holes in some of the upper floors just to make you waste time. The time limit seems bad, but it’s really not - remember, it only counts time spent in first person.

The worst part of Thanatos First is honestly the grinding you need to do in order to get there, along with the fact that bad RNG can and will end your run before it ever begins. On an emulator, this wouldn’t be nearly as bad as I’m making it out to be: if you can savestate your way through the early negotiations, it’s really not bad at all. The worst part of the tower is the first floor. Once you get to Tartarus, the really bad shit (Kuchisake-onna, Hi no Enma, Arachne) stops showing up altogether and nothing in Tartarus apart from Tisiphone is that much of a pain to handle.

This is another way in which the designers were surprisingly nice: once you’re past the third floor, there’s all of one enemy who has an instant death spell - that being Alastor, who we saw in the SEBEC route. Alastor at least has a consistent negotiation tactic that works and by that point we have guns that can charm-lock him if negotiations break down, minimizing the chances of getting instakilled.

I did go ahead and post my save file for Snow Queen in the OP, so you can try it yourself if you want. There should be two save files in there: one is at Mikage Sun Mall from right before or right after (I forget which) I savestated through the casino, and the other is inside the Ice Palace before I fused any of the Personas or bought any of the tablets. The first save file is for if you want to use Nanjo instead of Elly or Brown.

The five Personas I used were Lilim, Urvashi, Janus, Ame no Uzume, and Fuutai. The whole “hidden potential” thing doesn’t matter because chances are that only Lilim and maybe Janus will ever hit a high enough rank for it to kick in.

My recommendation, by the way, is that you go four Megidolaons (Scorching Tablet) and one Maragidyne (Evil Fire Tablet) rather than try Mabufudyne or Maziodyne.

[LaZodiac]

@Timrod

remember, it only counts time spent in first person.

Right, right. Forgot to note in my earlier comment, that’s a good decision. That makes it a lot more tolerable.

I’m honestly surprised there is so much let in the back half of the tower. You’d think they’d make it harder… but at the same time, even the SMT devs know that you can’t make a game that’s UNFUN… theoretically.

[Timrod]

: With Thanatos Tower behind us, it’s time to look at Nemesis Tower. Nemesis Tower is honestly probably one of the best-designed things in this game. I didn’t think much of it when I played it the first time, but when you look at it, it’s clear that a lot of testing probably went into it.

: Once we finish Thanatos Tower, the game puts us in Class 1-1, which has the entrance to Devil’s Peak. You might notice those two Jack Frosts in the corner there - they’re actually special.

: In the English PSP version, this Jack Frost is Raiho Kuzunoha, a minor character from Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army (which released a few months before the PSP version of P1 did). In that game, Raiho is a Jack Frost who undergoes a demon fusion with a bancho uniform and decides that he wants to become the next Raidou.

: He also has a girlfriend, named Reiho (surname is obviously Ayanam-hee). Now, given that the Raidou games didn’t exist when Persona 1 released on the PS1, you might think that they were something Atlus added in for the re-release. They’re not.

: In the PS1 version Raiho is actually a different Jack Frost from Shin Megami Tensei If… by the name of Hee-ho-kun.

: Unlike Raiho, Hee-ho-kun is a Jack Frost who winds up in the SMT If protagonist’s high school and decides he wants to be a student. You might think it would be a logical choice to switch him for Raiho, simply because the Raidou games came out in the US and SMT If did not (and was not fan-translated until 2018)… but Hee-ho-kun was in Nocturne.

: Also strangely enough, Atlus made a Hee-ho-kun costume for Morgana in Persona 5… as paid DLC.

: Brown, that’s racist.

: The way Elly is basically ready to devil bust them makes me think she’d be right at home in SMT 4, though I think we all know modern Atlus would make her a Messian instead of a hunter.

: Anyway, I dicked around Devil’s Peak for a bit because I wanted to see what was in there. Devil’s Peak has two forms: one that existed in the PS1 version and one that exists only in the PSP remake as a bonus dungeon.

: The purpose of Devil’s Peak is to make sure you don’t miss any spell cards by allowing you to encounter every enemy in the game. The PS1 version has seven floors, while the PSP adds floors eight through twelve which unlock after completing Snow Queen.

: The even-numbered floors are accessible via a staircase in the center of the dungeon. To get to the odd-numbered floors, you have to go through the even-numbered ones. Right now, we only have access to floors 6 and 7, which contain enemies from Thanatos Tower.

: Floor 7 has a very rare bonus that you’re absolutely going to want if you get it. Alice seems extremely threatening: she’s level 99, a Fiend order enemy (who cannot be negotiated with) and seems like she’s here to punish you for grinding. The truth is, she has no attacks and is basically a Metal Slime.

: Using the guns and charm ammo we picked up from Thanatos Tower, we can lock Alice down and stop her from running away. I had to move Yukino around a bit to get her within firing range.

: This gets you an ABSURD amount of EXP.

: Anyway, once we do that we can head on over to the library. Stalling? Who’s stalling? I’m not stalling.

: This is how you know that Tsutomu is related to T-Shirt Isono from Devil Summoner: Yarai-ku is the city where Devil Summoner takes place. It’s weird that Atlus bothered to translate this given that they never translated Devil Summoner. Not even the fans have, probably because it’s a Saturn game and Saturn emulation is still pretty balls. It’s why I have a real one.

: Honestly, Philemon should just say “Wait, you did Thanatos first, what are you talking to me for go steamroll this place.”

: Unlike Thanatos Tower and Devil’s Peak, Nemesis Tower doesn’t get a big scrolling introduction.

: You’ll notice that the clock is back in the top-right corner. I forgot to mention it, but it’s in Thanatos Tower as well. Let’s get to it.

: “I assume you’re the guardian of this tower… can’t you even appear before us?”

: “Haha… I suppose there’s nothing to be done for it. You call yourself a guardian, but you’re powerless without the Snow Queen!”

: “Yeah, you hear that? You’re scared of us, aren’t you? Hahaha!”

: “Hey guys! This tower’s boss seems like, totally weak, huh?”

: If I was one of those people who did the whole italicized lines to add dialog to a silent protagonist thing, I would have Jihei saying “We’ve already killed Yuriko and we know you’re lower level!” Actually wait, I kinda did that with Mara, didn’t I?

: “Lucky us! Hahahahaha!”

: Wait, aren’t you just the villain from Yakuza 2?

: “What a litter of witless, yapping whelps you are!”

: “But it’s all to the good… I think you can keep me entertained for a while. Weak playmates fall so easily I rarely get to enjoy my sport!”

: “Ohoho… I haven’t introduced myself, have I? My deepest apologies. I am the Snow Queen’s faithful servant… the guardian of Nemesis Tower…”

: “I hope you grasp the honor of dying by my hand.”

: I can absolutely imagine Yukino taking her shirt off to reveal that she’s got yakuza tats, and then getting into a cutscene battle involving lots of tiger drops with Michiko. Unlike Yuriko, Michiko isn’t a reference to anyone as a far as I know (or rather, as far as the SMT wiki knows).

: “Incidentally… hm? You… yes, you!”

: “Oh, what a pleasant surprise! Such a fine, handsome gentleman! I’ll spare your life if you become my pet. What say you?”

: If you have Nanjo, she tries to make him her pet instead. His lines are basically carbon copies of Brown’s altered to be in his voice.

: “W-w-wait a second! What the hell!?”

: Okay yeah this totally needs to go down like Yakuza. Brown gets to be the Majima of the group, driven insane after shitting himself. Elly can be an idol singer who is actually an underground fight club champion and Ayase can get replaced with one of those people from New Japan Pro Wrestling that showed up in Yakuza 6.

: Jihei is probably a side character who gets pulled in and finishes Michiko off because Kiryu and Majima aren’t allowed to kill people.

: “I’ll take that ugly face and make it uglier!”

: All of Brown’s lines here are gold.

: “Th-this is outrageous! I take pity on you… and you bite back in response!? H-hmph! I suppose you commoners never could understand my greatness!”

: She’s not lying. The clock will still show up, but we are not under a time limit to complete the tower. Except… doesn’t something feel a bit off?

: “Once more, take as much time as you want! I look forward to seeing you! Until then… farewell!”

: This honestly feels a lot like a couple of the pre-written scenarios for Pathfinder I used to GM. There’s one in particular Nemesis Tower does remind me of, but I’m thinking of doing an LP dunking on some of those so I’ll leave it unspoiled.

: One thing I didn’t understand when I did this the first time is that… wait, shit. You know what, let’s talk to our party members (something I didn’t do the first time) because I don’t want to reveal what the gimmick behind Nemesis Tower is. Not yet, anyway.

: “And she acts like she’s better than everyone in the whole world! Just between you and me, she’s a lot like our very own Mr. N!”

: This line. This is the important one. Let me just stop and talk about something else for a minute, because this is part of why I like Nemesis Tower.

: There’s a rather infamous story about the development of Dishonored. Dishonored has this mission where you have to kill a person at a costume party, but don’t know who they are because everyone is wearing masks. When the mission was first developed, there was a guard standing by the stairs to the top half of the building who would tell you that no one was allowed upstairs.

: The problem was that the developers assumed that people would ignore the guard and go upstairs anyway. Instead, they assumed that it was the developer telling them there was no reason to go up there.

: Now, you might assume that Michiko telling you twice that there’s no time limit is a bit suspicious. But what if it’s not? What if you know that Thanatos is coming and you need to grind for it? This dialogue is what stops it from becoming another Dishonored playtester scenario… in 1996.

: “Whatever the truth, it’s clear that she’s hiding something. It may be best for us to hurry, even without a strict time limit to observe.”

: The first floor has an enemy I don’t think we ever ran into in the SEBEC route, that being Siren. Because of the way we did Thanatos first (and also because of that Alice) we’re more than high enough level to grab every spell card here. That’s what we want to do.

: Weirdly enough, having Ayase seduce Siren is the correct negotiation tactic.

: The first floor is very small. All those empty spots are obvious dead ends.

: The second floor has two stores which sell guns and armor. We don’t need them. They do, however, have a Velvet Room. I stop and fuse Azrael - Azrael goes to Yukino, and Janus goes to Elly to boost her stats. Right now, our party is something like this:

• Jihei: L40, P in the high 30s
• Yukino: L36/P36
• Elly: L33/P34
• Ayase: L33/P34
• Brown: L36/P35

: The third floor is where shit gets real. I took this shot at the same time as getting into a battle (hence the screen tearing) but you can see that we’re headed to a room with two exits.

: “No it ain’t! Comic Hotmilk’s so bad I use it as a nighttime sleep aid! More like Comic Warmmilk!”

: This totally doesn’t seem like a creepy fetish thing.

: “Who you callin’ little, asshole? I’m a grower, not a shower!”

: I actually thought this was the cow talking, but there’s a guy in a very dark brown suit standing in front of the party.

: “Ugh… uuuuurgh! Bluuuuugh! Cough Gag Puke”

: “S-stop…! H-Help me! P-please, n-no more milk!”

: “Help me, kid! I’m drowning in sticky white stuff, and it’s not even MY sticky white stuff!”

: This is definitely someone’s fetish.

: “Ugh…! I… I can’t do this! I’m a thinking man… my brain is my strongest… muscle…”

: “I thought you were both at school!”

: “Please… stop! I beg you! B-bluuuurrrgh!”

: “I… I’m gonna die… ugh…”

: “Oh, come on! I’m a sex machine, not a milk machine!”

: “I… can’t move… anymore…”

: “Ha…hahaha… ahahahaha… haha…”

: “Oh, no! They can’t hold out much longer! We must do something about it now, before it becomes too late!”

: “Huh…? Y-Yuka! You guys! P-p-p-please save me!”

: “And me! I’m gonna get ED if this goes on too much longer!”

: “Uhh… save these two goons? I wanna say, ‘No way!’ But like, why’s Michiko doing this? Is there some point I’m not getting?”

: “And ugliness is unforgivable! Therefore I, the acme of attractiveness, am punishing these sinners!”

: I didn’t know acme was actually a word, but it is. It means “summit” or “peak”.

: “Do you understand, whelps? Ohohohohoho!”

: If there’s one complaint I have with Snow Queen, apart from how bad Thanatos First is, it’s that a lot of the characterization is kind of inconsistent. Elly sounds a lot more like Nanjo than she does herself (which is kind of understandable because they basically have the same lines) but Brown sounds like a completely different person here. Plus, this was the guy who was hitting on Yuriko before he even knew who she was. If anything, I think Brown sounds more like Yukino here than he does himself.

: “Oh, there was a line there, and you just crossed it! Cut this out and get those chains off them right now!”

: “Oh, you care deeply for your friends, mm? What a beautiful friendship, yes?”

: “Ohohohoho! How splendid! Hah! “Friendship!” Then in honor of your admirable friendship… I’ll tell you where the key is so you can free these ugly fellows from their chains!”

: “It can be found on the topmost floor of this tower… that’s right – it’s in my care! Ohohohoho!”

: “Ohohohoho!”

: “Ohohohoho! However… those mirror shards you so eagerly seek… you may find one through the door behind me. The mirror shard is kept within a large chest there… along with a hint to defeat me.”

: “Ohohohohohohohoho! Remember, there’s no time restriction in this tower! Spend as much time as you like searching! You only have to ask that your friends endure the torture a while longer.”

: Omitted - several more generic ojou-sama laughs.

: “Blurrrgh… t-the key… please!”

: “Ugh… Uuuuuuugh… where… oh where… is the key to unchain my heart…?”

: Before I explain the gimmick of Nemesis Tower, let’s talk to our party members.

: “We gotta help them, but we need that Mirror Shard, too. What should we do?”

: “It’s a good lesson for those two, don’tcha think? I mean, they’re kinda lame…”

: “They get on my nerves sometimes, but they’re not that bad. I wanna help 'em out!”

: “Gah! I can’t stand that Michiko!”

: So anyway, here’s the gimmick. Nemesis Tower has three places in which you can fight Michiko. Let’s post the map so I can explain further.

: The map looks big and complicated, right? Well, here’s how it works. From the moment you enter Nemesis Tower, a hidden countdown starts. That countdown lasts for 20 minutes.

: If you make it to Michiko within 20 minutes (see the room on floor 5 with the red kanji) you fight the weakest version of Nemesis, located on the fifth floor. This timer works just like the one in Thanatos Tower, meaning it only runs in first-person mode.

: After the 20-minute timer runs out, the boss trigger on the fifth floor disappears and the sixth floor becomes accessible. The sixth floor has a stronger version of Nemesis. A second timer then starts for 40 minutes.

: After 40 additional minutes (so, over an hour from when you entered Nemesis Tower) the boss trigger on the sixth floor disappears and the seventh and eighth floors open up. Here, you fight the strongest version of Nemesis.

: Michiko isn’t lying when she says that there’s no time limit. You can in fact take as long as you’d like. However, she omits one fact that is kind of a kick in the dick if you’re expecting to grab the mirror shard and then make it to her in 20 minutes.

: If you take the left door, you’re put on a short path to the fifth floor. If you take the right door, you’re put on a winding route that goes to the fifth floor and then drops down a series of holes to the first floor where the mirror shard is. Simply put, there is no way to do all of that and then make it back to the fifth floor in 20 minutes. You MIGHT be able to if you TAS the game, but even then.

: Anyway, the four-nuke strategy doesn’t work as well here, mostly because there’s a lot of enemies who nullify and/or reflect nuclear damage. Unfortunately, due to the time limit, we don’t really have the time to make new Personas for everyone.

: The fourth floor is basically one gigantic dark room. If you look at the path branching north, that leads to a treasure room with some weapons in it that we don’t need. We’re going for 20-minute Michiko, by the way.

: I went for it anyway. The Dubthach Lance is really the only piece worth considering if you’ve already done Thanatos Tower - this is because it adds several points of Agility to Brown, and as we all know, speed is king in this game.

: Once you get up to the fifth floor, it’s a straight shot to Michiko’s room.

: “That’s my plan, anyway. I have a feeling you won’t give up that easily.”

: This is my absolute favorite thing in an RPG of any kind, where the villain (and/or DM’s) carefully-laid plans just fucking collapse and they’re left in shock. Things like the trial in Chrono Trigger if you get found not guilty.

: “Oh… oh…! How can this be!? The source of my strength… the power of negative emotion…!”

: “The hatred and anger is too weak! This won’t be enough at all!”

: This is something I don’t really get. Nemesis is a goddess of retribution, but not retribution based on anger. She’s specifically the goddess of retribution against those who are arrogant or prideful (and in some cases also the goddess of vengeance against criminals) but not some kind of weird berserker blood deity.

: "No! Simply impossible! My plans were flawless! Without exceptions, humans think ‘As long as I’m okay, others don’t matter.’ "

: “This mindset… no, it’s even more atavistic than that! My plans revolve around the basic human instinct for self-preservation! Why would you try to help others with the expectation of no reward?”

: I love absolutely EVERYTHING about this version of events so much so that I don’t even really want to post the dialog for the other versions. The way they wrote this makes you feel like you’re a Jojo protagonist.

: “I can’t understand at all! My strength… this level of power is FAR from adequate! What am I supposed to do?”

: “This is for torturing Toro and Tsutomu! For calling us all whelps! But most of all… for saying I’m your pet! You’re gonna pay royally for that one! Now let’s get this showdown started!”

: She’s actually right. You only need eight mirror shards to get the good ending. However, here’s the kicker: there’s actually thirteen mirror shards in the game. If you stop and get the one on the alternate route, it actually locks you out of getting all twelve shards.

: “I like, don’t care too much about what happens to Toro or Tsutomu. But seeing a jerk like you act like some stuck-up celeb… now that totally pisses me off! Get it?”

: “Silence! Silence! SILENCE!”

: “Let me be clear on this… you’re saying that I am inferior to that hideous pair? I, the lovely Michiko?”

: I mean, given that Toro has Mara as a Persona and Tsutomu could feasibly obtain a COMP from his uncle, who knows the current Kuzunoha incarnation… yeah probably.

: “Oh… oh…! This is outrageous! My magnificent plans were simply too sophisticated for you mangy curs! I knew I should have slain you all as soon as you entered this tower!”

: Fucking BURN. I think I like the sort of off-versions of the characterization that exist in Snow Queen more than I like the ones that exist in the SEBEC route.

: “Ahaha… I, for one, would be ashamed to look that way in public. Ayase is right. A failure to acquire a couple of Mirror Shards in this tower won’t hurt a bit. Let’s draw a line under this conversation, shall we?”

: “However much we explain it, you’ll never understand our reasons for coming directly here. Now, en garde!”

: “No! I won’t succumb to the human heart! Kindness! Friendship! Trust! Such things simply do not exist in this world!”

: It’s like she doesn’t even realize that the proper title for Nemesis would be “Lady” as Nemesis is female.

: “Lord Nemesis… be the sword which vanquishes my foe! Heed my call! Go, Nemesis!”

: Isn’t that just the Statue of Liberty? That’d explain why Michiko thinks Nemesis is some kind of blood god like Kali - she doesn’t even know who Nemesis IS. There’s also a bit of weirdness here in that it’s implied that what we’re seeing is basically Michiko in a ridiculous outfit.

: “Soooo lovely… and sooo elegant!”

: “…You gotta be joking! I’ve had enough with the fun and games already! I’m so disgusted I can barely speak.”

: What are you, a Metroid?

: With us having done Thanatos first, Nemesis is a fucking JOKE. Even if she’d reached full power (which gives her some extra HP and slightly better stats) she’d STILL be a joke.

: To understand what you’re seeing here - we finished Nemesis off in just under two full rounds of combat. Ayase didn’t get her turn because Nemesis was already dead. Nemesis did no damage to anyone, and I’m not even sure she got a turn at all. That’s entirely possible, because in this version she has a whopping 12 agility. At full strength, she has… 15. That’s less than half of what our slowest party member has.

: In fact, because of that Alice we killed earlier, only Elly and Brown get enough EXP to level. Ayase gets a Persona level only, and Jihei and Yukino get not even a full level-up.

: “Or do you wanna go another few rounds?”

: “I…I lost!?”

: You keep on using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means. That movie’s overrated as hell.

: “And to a pack of crude delinquents, no less! Oh! How can this be? Oh…! Ohhhhhh!”

: “You got a beatdown from me, the always-amazing Brown, and his gang! Is that getting through to you!?”

: “So stop horking like a seal and get out of our sight!”

: “Yup, that’s right! You’re like, totally, hopelessly stupid. I’m sick of looking at your stupid face.”

: “Aaaaaaaaaaagh! What manner of egotistic, abhorrent monsters are you!?”

: I feel like that line could fit in any episode of Always Sunny. Title card: “The Gang Nukes Michiko to Death”

: “I’ve done nothing, yet the five of you gang up on me, then gloat in triumph! People are always like that! You lot are no exception! And neither are those ugly faces on the walls who once senselessly bullied me!”

: I feel like they kind of overdid Michiko a bit the same way they over-did the villains in Persona 5 for the most part. It’s enough that she tried to kill Toro and Tsutomu. I don’t think they really needed to tack on her being a serial killer.

: Okay game, we get it. I’m surprised we don’t get a flashback to her kicking a box of puppies or something.

: “But those morons in my class… they called me names! They talked behind my back! They gave me the cold shoulder!”

: “Only the Snow Queen mask ever extended a helping hand to me! That’s right, it and no one else! Only the mask understood my profound sorrow! My wretched circumstances!”

: “Tell me, what right does anyone have to pick on poor little me? I certainly can’t understand!”

: “What? But it’s entirely your fault! Is this really why you abandoned the real world to be a minion of the Snow Queen?”

: “Unbelievable… you’ve gone completely round the twist!”

: “I can’t believe this! I’ve had enough! I suppose it was entirely too much to ask. How could you, the poor in spirit, understand my sorrow!?”

: “Hmph! Fine! I’ll give you a win, this once! But I warn you… in due time, the thirst for revenge churning in me will be denied no more! And on that day, I shall once again give you hell!”

: Michiko is never coming back.

: “Remember that! I’ll stand in your way, again and again!”

: And with that, Michiko fucks off forever. She never shows up in any of the other games.

: We also get our seventh mirror shard. At this point, there’s no way we can get the bad ending. That ship actually sailed once we got the sixth mirror shard in Thanatos, because you get one for the boss of Hypnos Tower as well.

: We now have four Ambrosia, but at this point we’re guaranteed to get the last one.

: “Oh, hey! I wonder if Toro and Tsutomu are okay… that stupid Michiko! She didn’t even give us the key!”

: “We should check on 'em once we get back to school.”

: We’re not quite done with this update, because apart from showing off what happens if you go the other route, we need to go to the Cafeteria back at the school and talk to Toro.

: “Tsutomu told me to give this to you. When we were coming back from the tower, we found this shiny thing… but his muscles hurt so bad that he couldn’t hold it.”

: “So I’m giving it to you in his place.”

: Remember that mirror shard we ‘passed up’? Toro and Tsutomu grabbed it on their way out.

: They also find a second one, bringing our total from Nemesis Tower to 3. If we had accepted Michiko’s offer, we’d only have 2 shards and be locked to a maximum of 11. Anyway, we’ve still got some optional/alternate dialogue to go through.

: First, let’s do the optional dialogue for the room you wind up in if you take the other door. I’m going to make this work as if it’s all one cutscene when in reality, the part about “who’s going to open the chest” is slightly different based on who you have with you.

: “Is this some kind of joke?”

: “Knowing Michiko, this strikes me as the sort of mocking nonsense she’d favor. Still… reaching here from the torture chamber was… quite an excursion…”

: “Is this the chest Michiko referred to that contains a mirror shard? Dear me… I didn’t think finding our way here would be so strenuous.”

: “Ugh… I’m like… gonna fall over and die if I hafta move another inch! Who’s the genius who said we should go get a mirror shard!?”

: That would be you.

: “If it turns out there isn’t one in that chest, we came all this way for NOTHING! And that would SUCK!”

: “It’s an awfully suspicious chest. Any volunteers to open it? I’m 99.999% certain it’s a trap.”

: “I’m kind of shy, not the type to take charge… so I’m gonna pass.”

: “Bitching and moaning about it won’t do us any good! Let’s open 'er up! Even though there’s no time limit, we still took a little too long.”

: “That’s it! I’m TIRED! I have to rest!”

: “Oh man, I don’t wanna think about walking back to the torture chamber!”

: “Mind if we take a short break? I’m quite worn out.”

: You spot a piece of paper in the corner of the chest. It appears to be a letter from Michiko. You open the letter. It reads:

“Ohohohoho! So you’ve reached this chest, have you? What a greedy bunch!”
“It must have been quite an endeavor. Ohohohohohoho!”
“You found what you sought, yes? Unlike you rotters, I keep my promises!”
“And now, as promised, I will reveal my weakness!”
“I’m at my weakest… when you don’t dawdle in getting to me! Ohohohohoho!”
“I do hope this helps! So by all means, hurry to my chamber! I’ll be waiting! See you soon!”

• From Michiko with love

: Next up, let’s do the scene where you take more than 20 minutes to reach Michiko. I should note that both the “20 minutes to 1 hour” and “More than 1 hour” versions of the fight use the same dialogue.

: “Looks like Michiko’s room… but talk about bad taste. What are these faces on the walls?”

: “Ohohohoho! These faces are all that’s left of those who didn’t obey me… these faces are you future!”

: “Hmhm… five new faces for my collection. Truly a red-letter day!”

: “So, what do you think of my collection? I hope you appreciate it. Well? What took you so long in getting here? I grew weary of waiting.”

: “Ohohohohoho! I must say, I can’t believe you fell so easily into my trap! Removing the tower’s time restriction turned out to be a very good move.”

: “As a result of that, you threw away your only chance of defeating me! It’s too funny! I can’t stop laughing! Ohohohohoho!”

: “Eh? A trap!? What are you talking about? What have you done!?”

: “Huh? We fell into your trap? Whaddaya mean?”

: “Whatever, ugly! You’re just bluffing 'cause we actually got to you and now you’re outta luck! You’re such a liar! Just let us beat you already!”

: “Hohohohoho! Allow me to tell you how this Nemesis Tower works… Anger, hatred, despair… the tower absorbs these negative emotions as energy, allowing it to grow.”

: “You might say the tower is a living thing. By tapping into the energy stored within the tower, there’s no limit to how strong I can become!”

: “Do you understand now? Hmhmhm… the anguish and rage that hideous pair felt as they suffered… the doubt and despair that filled their hearts as their friends never returned… hahahahahah!”

: "“Those emotions have fueled the incredible power I wield! Bask in its immensity! I’d never have gained this much if you hadn’t spent so long reaching here. I can’t thank you enough!”

: “Her power is indeed immense… why, she’s merely standing there, and I can feel her strength from here! It must be true then, that Kenta and Tsutomu’s anger and hatred fuel her…”

: “How could I have let this happen!?”

: “What!? Ngh… this malevolent force…!”

: “It’s coming from Michiko!? But she’s only standing in place! The anger and hatred those two felt as they were tortured…”

: “Their emotions must have enhanced her power beyond what we can imagine…! We’ve been utterly outfoxed! If only I’d been more suspicious about the lack of a time limitation…!”

: “Now, presumptuous whelps… for your crimes in defying the Snow Queen and making light of me… I’ll add you to the ranks of those who have betrayed me!”

: “Show me your anger! Your regret! Your despair! Your hatred!”

Next time, we’ll finish Hypnos Tower and then it’s on to the end of Persona 1.