: 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:
