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

[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.

[LaZodiac]

Okay, while Thanatos felt a little rough or rude… this one just seems kinda cool and tricky. Rude, but in an interesting enough way for it to actually be interesting. I like it!

[Timrod]

My favorite thing about it, personally, is that the developers had to have tested it pretty extensively before they shipped it. You had to know that the player could make it to Michiko easily within 20 minutes if you went through the left door (the relatively easy part) but also had to make it impossible for players to go through the right door and still make it within 20 minutes. I don’t even think the game sets a flag for this: I’m pretty sure you can go through the right door, turn around after a minute or two and go the other way, and you’ll still get the best outcome.

The only thing I wish Atlus had done differently is make Michiko more of a threat if you’ve already done Thanatos. There is a way we could’ve made that happen, but it’s really not enough. What happens is that the last tower you do has the boss strengthened by a few levels, but even with Michiko at full power it’s not enough to make her nearly as much of a threat as Yuriko was. We could actually have done Nemesis last and still gotten all the Ambrosia so long as we did Thanatos first.

[SpammyV]

There is an Always Sunny in Philadelphia title generator but the music seems to be broken.

The real question is how many drinks do I have to have for all the "Ohohohohohohohohoho"s?

[LaZodiac]

One for each Ho.

The amount of elaborate effort put into Snow Queen makes the uh… rest of the game really stand out as kinda bland too, I’m realizing. That’s interesting a result.

[Timrod]

: Before we head out to Hypnos Tower, I stopped at the gem store to buy some Clean Salt. Clean Salt is an item that works like the Estoma spell - it stops you from encountering enemies that are of a lower level than you are (done by character level, not by Persona level).

: I also did some grinding in Devil’s Peak to get everyone to a minimum of level 40. Unfortunately, I didn’t run into another Alice, but I did fuse some new Personas.

: Ayase gets Hermod as a stopgap, with Maragidyne rather than Mabufudyne. We’re probably going to need to grind more later, but for now this should be fine.

: Brown gets Pascal the Dog, who really isn’t bad if you can give him Megidolaon. Megidolaon pretty much fixes everything that’s wrong with him - otherwise he’s got a really low SP cost for a level 40 Persona and still has pretty decent stats.

: For Jihei, I fuse Odin, but this time I give Odin Megidolaon. He’s now automatically way better than he was in the SEBEC route.

: Philemon’s technically wrong here. I’d say that Nemesis has a much simpler map, but what he means is that Hypnos doesn’t have a gimmick the way Nemesis or Thanatos did.

: Why Hypnos Tower is just Big Ben, I don’t know.

: Welcome to Hypnos Tower. Unlike Thanatos and Nemesis, we aren’t immediately greeted by the tower’s master. See how the clock in the top-right has around 10 minutes taken out of it already? Hypnos has a time limit like Thanatos did, except it’s 2 hours instead of 3.

: I forgot to use our Clean Salt right away, but we definitely want to do that. The random encounters here are all way below our level (Lilim is the highest-level enemy here at 21) and they’re simply not worth fighting. All of the enemies here are from the hospital.

: That’s better. The Star of David in the corner under the moon indicator lets us know we have Clean Salt on. I have no idea why they picked the Star of David.

: There’s really not much to the first two floors at all.

: The second floor has a treasure room with some weapons and fusion items in it, but we don’t need it.

: There’s also a Velvet Room and a healing spring here, in case you need them. We don’t, having been in all of one random encounter.

: The third floor has weapon and armor shops that we similarly don’t need. However, that’s not all there is to the third floor.

: On the other side from the shops is this room, which on the map kind of looks like the torture chamber in Nemesis Tower. Let’s go inside.

: “Tadashi and Tamaki!? And Nurse Natsumi! What are they doing here? Weren’t they back at school? No way…!”

: I don’t know why she’s surprised, given that we did Nemesis Tower and it did the same thing.

: She killed the Xbox kid! Now we’ll never see all those cheevos!

: “Damn that Snow Queen! I’ll avenge their deaths if it’s the last thing I do!”

: “T-Tamaki!? Is he talking in his sleep? Wait… they’re all just sleeping!?”

: “Tch… well, that was a lot of panic over nothing.”

: Unlike the other two towers, it doesn’t seem like the person who runs Hypnos Tower is very interested in killing people.

: “Hypnos Tower…”

: “Hold it, Yukino. Even if they are only sleeping, it’s odd they should be here and not at school. It could be a trap of the Snow Queen’s. I advise keeping your guard up.”

: “Look at those faces, though… they seem so happy! I dunno if the Snow Queen really has anything to do with this.”

: Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do… at least, not at the moment. There’s a bit of optional dialogue here, but the only really important parts are Elly and Nanjo.

: “If Hypnos is, in fact, tied to their strange slumber… I doubt they’ll wake up no matter how long we wait here.”

: “If they’re not in mortal peril, it should be fine to leave them. We don’t have time. Time is money, as they say. Let’s proceed.”

: “Ugh… I have to make a conscious effort to avoid falling asleep. I’d like it it we could spend as little time here as possible.”

: At least here, they give you a reason for the time limit - Hypnos Tower makes anyone who enters it fall asleep.

: Just down the hall, there’s a room identical to the one we just came from.

: “This is deplorable! I work my ass off as a student, and what do the teachers do? Lie back and doze off! Get real!”

: “Ewww! Baldy’s sneering in his sleep… gross!”

: “Oh no, Ms. Ooishi! She must be having a nightmare. Look, she’s sweating so profusely… did the Snow Queen cause this?”

: “They’re just like the people in the other room. None of them show any signs of waking up anytime soon. What should we do?”

: “We’re not just gonna leave 'em here, are we?”

: “Hmmmmm… alright! Listen to your leader’s decision! We’re moving on! Although… wait a minute… if we save them, they’ll owe us one. Whaddaya think?”

: “We’re letting precious time to go waste in our indecision. Whether we awaken the sleepers or climb the tower, we must make a choice.”

: “Hey, like, now’s our chance! Let’s draw stuff on Baldy’s head!”

: “Oh, for crying out loud…! Remind me why we entered the tower… to escape the school, correct? Then we should ignore any distractions from that end!”

: There’s one final room on the third floor. By the way, have you guessed how we’re going to get two of the three mirror shards in this dungeon?

: “Huh? Ahhh… I get it! The boss has to be around here! Stay on your toes, guys! Oooh, I always wanted to say that.”

: “Hey, uh, this door is kinda weird-looking. Wanna go in?”

: “This door does look suspicious, but I don’t get the sense that it’s dangerous. Perhaps we should consider Ayase’s suggestion and go through.”

: “Alright! No use talking and talking without doing anything. Let’s see what’s on the other side!”

: There’s a Philemon cutscene here, and I don’t know why. I get why they wouldn’t have made one for doing Thanatos or Nemesis first - mostly because that would have taken up a lot of space on the disc - but still.

: “How are you doing, friends?”

: “This is a world of dreams.”

: “Ruled by the persona Hypnos of this tower’s master.”

: “Hypnos is currently trapping people’s souls and confining them in the dream world.”

: “Thus, this is a crossroad between the dream world and reality.”

: “Either go to the dream world and awaken the people there,”

: “Or continue forth and defeat Hypnos.”

: “The choice is yours.”

: “But remember, there is a limit to the time you are given.”

: “I wonder if I end up in the dream world when I go to sleep, too.”

: “I feel icky, watching someone else’s dream… like I’m some peeping tom.”

: The Dream World is a much simpler version of Tartarus, only without the whole jail thing.

: “Huh? Is that the guy Nurse Natsumi just broke up with? He’s pretty handsome. Not like me, but not bad.”

: “Whoa! Nurse Natsumi’s boyfriend is like, smoking hot! I so wish I had an awesome guy like him.”

: Natsumi’s dream is not at all necessary to get all the mirror shards, but it’s the first one you come across.

: “Oh, Nurse Natsumi… don’t tell me she’s acting as though she cooks the store’s pre-made lunches. I feel sorry for him.”

: “This… is painful to watch, in so many ways. Let’s wake her up and move on.”

: “Big surprise she got dumped, huh?”

: “This is fantastic! To think that the human subconscious can create such a realistic environment! This convenience store looks authentic in every respect!”

: “I wonder if we can bring any of this food back to the real world… what a waste.”

: “Hey, you think eating the food in this dream is bad for you?”

: “No clerk, no other shoppers… this place is more unsettling than a convenience store late at night.”

: I honestly kind of wanted to leave her there, but she pulled the whole Steamed Hams thing.

: There’s another one right near where Natsumi is. We want to enter this one.

: “What the… Hanya is the principal and Ooishi is the vice-principal? What’s going on here? Ohhh, I get it! This is what they’re dreaming.”

: “Whaaaaaat? Baldy’s our principal here? That’s like, SUPER wrong!”

: “Vice-Principal Hanya’s desire for power must be very strong… not only does his dream reflect them, it pulled in Ms. Ooishi…”

: For those of you who think Hanya is annoying, don’t worry. He’ll be back in Persona 2.

: “Let’s hurry and wake 'em up. I can’t stand listening to this.”

: I did not know this until I went to get a portrait for Tadashi off the wiki, but he’s apparently in Persona 2 as well.

: “I love you with every fiber of my being!”

: Two things I want to note about this scene, both from the wiki. Apparently, Tadashi is based off one of the game’s scenario writer by the same name (Tadashi Satomi). Tadashi Satomi is also hugely divisive among fans and was kicked off Persona after Eternal Punishment. Why?

: Well, I didn’t know this, but Tamaki (full name: Tamaki Uchida) is actually based off a real actress by the name of Yuki Uchida, who had an idol career in the 90s. This entire scene is basically the real Tadashi Satomi shipping himself with Yuki Uchida.

: “Nooooo! Oh, the humanity!”

: “I refuse to believe Tamaki likes Tadashi! Someone, please tell me it’s all a dream!”

: This means someone was also probably crushing pretty hard on Yuriko Yamamoto. Now I realize that YIIK actually WAS true to the 1990s, the Allansons just didn’t realize it.

: “Wait… it IS a dream! Or is this reality and the other side is the dream…?”

: “Omigawd! I knew it!”

: “Honey… look into my eyes!”

: I should also mention that Tamaki is the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei If. I hadn’t played If when I started this LP, and still haven’t. I have an actual SNES and should probably fix that, since I hear that If isn’t nearly as bad as 1 and 2.

: Anyway, from what the wiki says (and I believe it), Tadashi Satomi shipping himself with a stand-in for a popular idol pissed off a whole lot of people in Japan. Who’d have thought, right? I mean, it’s not like idol fans in Japan are known for being extremely obsessive to the point of sending death threats if they even think their favorite idol is in a relationship with someone.

: “Look me in the eyes… do you see yourself? I see myself in your eyes… Ah! We’re united as one!”

: No, Yukino, no they can’t. Anyway, I had always wondered why people said Innocent Sin bombed in Japan, and now I know. In IS, Tadashi is married to Tamaki. Can’t imagine that would’ve stirred up any controversy, no sir. They rectify this in Eternal Punishment by having Tadashi die off-screen.

: Anyway, there’s one last door way out of the way. Hidden treasure? I bet it is.

: “This doesn’t feel like the other rooms. Is this someone else’s dream?”

: “…Huh? Someone’s back there!”

: Meet Kumi Hirose, the master of Hypnos Tower. The shirtless prettyboy is Hypnos.

: “She’s a cutie! Hm…? Wait a sec! Oh man, she’s got our school uniform on! How the heck did I never notice a girl like her!?”

: “Hey, what’s your name? Which homeroom are you in? Are you trapped here too?”

: “Heehee… why are you people here? This dream is for myself alone. The Snow Queen entrusted me with guarding this Hypnos Tower…”

: “It’s very rude of you to barge into someone else’s dream. Isn’t it, Sir Hypnos?”

: “You’re guarding this tower? Then you’re putting people to sleep and keeping them in the Dream World… but disposing of them entirely would be simple for you. Why have you chosen to imprison their souls in the Dream World instead?”

: “Heehee… you came all this way to ask me that? But I guess it can’t be helped.”

: “You’re forced to live in the real world, just like the rest. But isn’t it clear that people are happiest living inside their dreams?”

: “They can never be happy in the real world… I’m just helping them see that. Isn’t that right, Sir Hypnos?”

: Kumi is really the only one of the three tower bosses who didn’t deserve to die.

: If you’ve played Persona 4, it’s pretty obvious that both of the Sun S-Links were at least partially based on Kumi. Strangely, she’s NOT based on a real person as far as I know, which is surprising because of how much screen time she gets.

: “My grades went down, and… my p-parents said to forget the club… and study…”

: This is why I kind of don’t like Kumi as a villain, because she’s in what’s basically a borderline abusive scenario. Yuriko was too dumb to live, Michiko was an evil bitch, but Kumi? Kumi feels like she killed herself for, you know, the same reasons actual people do.

: “Um… I wasn’t… n-number one…”

: “I…I didn’t mean to…”

: The other thing I don’t really get is why being the Snow Queen in the play is such a big deal. I posted half the story when I started the updates for this route, and honestly the queen herself barely even has a role in her own story. Logically, Gerda should have the most screen time.

: “…”

: “U-um… it’s just… the “Snow Queen,” see… I was pick --”

: “But – my average was eighty --”

: Again, this is really shitty. What little the manga does with Snow Queen is pretty much entirely this, and the manga makes it very clear that Kumi killed herself.

: Personally, I think it would’ve been more thematically appropriate for Kumi to be in a coma. Maybe re-write it so that she was the last one to use the mask, not Ms. Saeko - so she hasn’t been out that long.

: “…I know, Father.”

: “…”

: “Whether I do or don’t do anything, it’s always like that… all of them…”

: “The world around me. The people around me. Everyone’s so… full of hostility… I feel like I don’t have any freedom…”

: “If only there was a gentle world, full of gentle people… a whole world full of kindness and generosity… where I could be free…”

: Sure sounds a lot like Maki. It is complete fucking bullshit that she dies and Maki gets to live. A more competent writer probably would’ve realized “Wow, this really is not great and maybe I should either re-write it so none of the other tower guardians are that bad and they all live, or re-write it so that Kumi is actually a bitch and kind of deserved to die.”

: The official explanation, by the way, is that Hypnos shows up and brings her to the world of dreams, but it’s being used as a euphemism for suicide. My personal explanation is that Hypnos Tower is non-canon.

: “…And?”

: I don’t like this scene. Not one fucking bit. It makes Yukino seem like a bitch when she’s not supposed to be. You know what, let’s just edit those last two lines to make them more appropriate.

: “So… that’s what made you shut yourself inside the Dream World. …And?”

: “The Snow Queen… that mask immediately understood my pain and anguish…!”

: “Y-You’re just like my father and the others in the Drama Club! You don’t even try to understand me!”

: “C’mon, Kumi, aren’t you taking it all a little too seriously? I mean, life’s full of fun stuff! You gotta take it easy! Live a little! Like me!”

: I get Brown being tone-deaf because Brown is supposed to be an idiot, but you’d think someone in the party would say something about this being EXACTLY THE WRONG WAY TO HANDLE THIS SITUATION.

: “So what if I’m stupid!? Ohhh, I cannot BELIEVE this! I’m like, SO pissed!”

: “No matter what I did or didn’t do, no one gave me a hint of praise! I tried my best, really I did! But everyone around me just… right, Sir Hypnos!? None of it was my fault, right!?”

: I get that they’re trying to make it seem like she’s another Yuriko, but it doesn’t work!

: “Your life seems very easy… any problem of yours is solved by blaming someone else from a safe distance. Are you that afraid of dealing honestly with other people?”

: “I must say, you seem rather weak and selfish to me.”

: Again, this is shit writing and a mischaracterization. This doesn’t sound like Elly at all, it sounds like Nanjo (which is what happens if you have him and not Elly). I should mention that I’m pretty sure this scene is optional, but it’s just so badly written.

: “Wh-who do you think you are!? I’m happy now! I’ve never been happier! It was the Snow Queen’s mask and Sir Hypnos who saved me, no one else!”

: “For the first time in my life, I’m free, here in the Dream World! It may not be real, but the happiness I feel inside is!”

: The other thing that I think makes Kumi more sympathetic is that she hasn’t killed anyone, nor has she tried to. I hate to spoil Persona 4, but it is complete fucking bullshit that she dies and Nametame doesn’t. That guy was way too fucking old to be that much of a moron, and the fact that he gets off scot-free is garbage emblematic of all of the writing issues this series has had from the get-go.

: “Then both of you are just part of Kumi Hirose’s dream. I’m guessing the real Kumi is somewhere else in the tower.”

: “And that means if we pinch her and wake her up, you’re history. So that’s exactly what we’ll do!”

: Let me explain what pinching Kumi does. If you choose not to, you fight Kumi in a weakened state similar to how Michiko works. If you do pinch her, she’s slightly stronger (about 8 levels higher if she’s the last tower guardian). I pinched her because I wanted more EXP.

: Anyway, once we’re done there we can back all the way out of the Dream World and go back to Hypnos Tower. All of those people we met there are now woken up here.

: “How are you feeling?”

: “Where in blazes am I? …This is all your doing, isn’t it!?”

: “You pack of delinquents! What are you up to, locking us in here?”

: “Dammit, I was having such a nice dream, and now I can’t remember any of it!”

: “Arrrrrgh! Will someone please explain to me what’s going on!? You ask them, Ms. Ooishi! They’ll listen to you!”

: “Oh, come ON, Mr. Hanya! How can you call us delinquents!? With a little support from these guys, I was risking my neck out there! All to save you and Ms. Ooishi!”

: “Wouldn’t you say I deserve at least a little thank-you for that? Then again… I guess it’s all right. What’s done is done!”

: “What’s important now is these Mirror Shards. Do either of you know anything? They’re super important if me and these guys are gonna save the school.”

: “Any ideas? Any at all…?”

: “I don’t know how it got there, but that was in my suit pocket. It ripped a hole in the inside!”

: “My daughter starts her job soon! I can’t ask her to mend my clothes anymore…”

: “Ahem T-that wasn’t relevant. Forget what I just said!”

: “Anyway, just what are you kids planning to do with this!? Nothing good, I’ll bet! Absolutely not! Out of the question!”

: “Something tells me if I give you this, the situation will get even worse!”

: “Seriously!? Are you for real!? What’s wrong with you, cueball!? You didn’t even let us explain, and you’re gonna say no just like that!?”

: “Ooooooh, you’re the worst! This is why everyone likes the principal and NO ONE likes you! Now gimme that shard, chromedome! Hand it over, baldo!”

: “…Okay. Here you go.”

: “I’m sorry… but we need this, not just for ourselves, but to save the entire school.”

: “Hmph! I won’t bother trying to stop you. Go on! Do whatever you please! …But listen up! If… when the school is back to normal… see me in my office! I have a special lecture in mind… after which I’ll demand a full explanation! So come prepared!”

: “Heh… don’t worry, you can hold us to it! All of us! See you later!”

: I’m just going to truncate this particular cutscene, because it’s more of Tadashi Satomi shipping himself. Trust me, you’re not missing anything.

: “I’ll get out of your hair if you just tell me one thing… do either of you have a mirror shard? It’s really important.”

: We now have all but one mirror shard, and I think you can guess where that last one is going to come from.

: “Good thing we took a little side trip to the Dream World.”

: “Oh, hey! If Tamaki and Tadashi had a shard… maybe Nurse Natsumi has one, too! Let’s ask her!”

: “Nurse Natsumi, do you have a mirror shard? Nurse Natsumi? Helllooooo! Earth to nurse!”

: That’s right, we’ll be getting the last one off Kumi.

: The rest of the dungeon is… it’s really straightforward, especially with no random encounters. I’ll post the map in case you’re curious.

: There’s an item room on the top floor that has some junk in it we don’t need.

: “Right, Kumi!? Sorry to keep you waiting… but we’re here now to straighten you out!”

: “So you came… you fools. You can’t see outside the bounds of reality… you can’t grasp or accept the paradise of dreams!”

: “Kumi… I dunno what to say… it really tears me up having to fight a cutie like you… but I gotta.”

: “But I gotta! For truth, justice, and the St. Hermelin way! Plus I gotta show off all these wicked skills I know!”

: “Now’s the time to apologize if you’re gonna!”

: “Judging others by their appearances only proves how foolish you are… Sir Hypnos! Help me! Defeat them, please!”

: So, Hypnos. Even in the powered-up state, he’s a weakling. He lasts longer than Nemesis did for exactly one reason: I hadn’t done any random encounters so half the party had to waste a round learning Megidolaon.

: Hypnos gets exactly one attack in, and it’s a single physical hit on Ayase. Unfortunately, Ayase was useless in this fight due to Hypnos’s immunities: Hypnos is Night order (the same as Lilim) and absorbs Fire, Ice and Earth. He’s weak to physical attacks, but why bother when you’ve got Megidolaon and he’s not immune to it?

: Pascal the Dog finishes Hypnos off by barking a nuke at him. Hypnos lasted… I want to say three full rounds.

: Only Ayase and Brown get a level-up.

: “The Persona your heart made is gone. You wanna keep going at it? Suits me either way.”

: “…So this is it…”

: “There’s no place for me anywhere. Not in the real world or the dream world… haha… I have to flee my own dream. Ahahaha…”

: “An easy win, thanks to me! Although… it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth…”

: “Whoo! We won! Hah! In your face! Well? Had enough yet? Hmmm?”

: “But I just blamed everyone else. I went to my safe place and nursed my grudge. I…I acted just like the people that I blamed for everything…”

: “Kumi… now that you acknowledge your weakness, you’re no longer weak. A dream is like an oasis in one’s soul… it quenche the thirst of travelers exhausted from life’s journey.”

: “Thank you, everyone… I wish friends like you were there for me back then…”

: And with that, we’ve completed the mirror.

: Next time, we’ll take on the Snow Queen and see what getting all 12 mirror shards gets us.

[Fefnir]

Ah, the time old tradition of Atlus almost having a good plotline, only to somehow fuck it up in the worst way imaginable. It’s great. And by great, I mean how many times do we have to teach you this lesson, Atlus?

[LaZodiac]

@Timrod

: “An easy win, thanks to me! Although… it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth…”

In which Brown reveals he’s the only person who realizes they basically just murdered a depressed suicide victim.

In a just world (and if Persona 1 was written like the later Persona’s mechanically) Kumi would be our navigator ala Teddy.

[SpammyV]

I can kind of see where they might have thought they were going with the towers, with the primary antagonists of each tower representing negative feelings of teenagers. Or negative responses to high-schooler’s stresses.

Yuriko looking at the uncertainty of life after high school and wondering, “Does it get any better than this?” And then someone says she could stay like this forever.
Kumi feeling misunderstood and like there is no place for her except her dreams. And then someone says she could stay in her dreams forever.

Granted this kind of falls apart when you hit Michiko since I’m finding it hard to read past a one note “Smug rich kid” stereotype, but that’s why I called it an attempt. I can see what they were going for and I can imagine the game that might’ve been if the whole thing was like the Snow Queen route. Maybe that is later Persona games, I know barely anything about this series other than it exists.

[Timrod]

: I hope everyone’s ready for the most annoying dungeon in this game. Let’s end this.

: “Is it working!?”

: Sure is Batman around here. There’s a few things about this cutscene that don’t make a lot of sense, even when you take the tiny bit of additional information the bad ending gives you into account.

: “Eeeeeeek!”

: “Holy son of a — wh - wh - wh - what the hell!?”

: The transition to the battle is just that sudden.

: You would think that being a creature made of snow, the Snow Queen would be weak to fire. Nope! She’s weak to nuclear and merely neutral to fire.

: Her main attack is casting Mabufudyne, which hits pretty hard but not hard enough.

: She has Magrydyne as a backup option, which mostly does a lot of damage to Brown. I didn’t take a single death during this fight, because the Snow Queen only got off a single Mabufudyne and a single Magrydyne and spent the rest of her turns casting Tarunda (physical defense buff) on herself… which did absolutely nothing against the chain of Megidolaons.

: Everyone gets a levelup and then some.

: We’re going to need to grind again, mostly because there’s a couple of Personas I want (namely Armaiti and Barbatos) before we fight the true final boss of the Snow Queen route.

: “Ms. Saeko! You okay? You must’ve been so cold… are you hurt?”

: So uh, this is where things kind of break down a little bit.

: “Tomomi? Who?”

: This is true, but it also isn’t. There’s kind of a plot hole here involving when certain things take place.

: “But whyever would your best friend possess you?”

: “I had no idea she thought of me that way… I guess… sometimes you hurt people without realizing it.”

: “Our last year here, and you finally beat me out.”

: “But I’m nervous about the mask… is it true everyone who’s played the Snow Queen’s role has been cursed?”

: “Whaaaat? Hey, I’m sure that’s just some superstition. Just keep up that cheerful attitude and I bet any curse wouldn’t dare touch you!”

: “C’mon, don’t talk like that! Cheer up! You won the title role! What am I supposed to think if you’re not happier about it?”

: “Y-you’re right.”

: “Huh!? She tricked me?”

: “She withdrew… because she’s scared of the curse…? No way! Even if she did bow out, I’m sure she was just being considerate!”

: “We’re in the same year, but I’ve never gotten a better role than her, so…”

: “…”

: “Why are you hiding? Well… break a leg tomorrow! I’ll be looking forward to it.”

: “…Your… …ault…”

: “What was that? I can’t hear you!”

: “Huh!? Tomomi, what’s gotten into you!? Calm down!”

: “You… you forced the masssk onto mee…”

: “Tomomi, are you all right? What’s this about the mask?”

: “The mask… the mask… suddenly wouldn’t… come off… it got so hot… hot! My face started… it started… sizzzzzling…”

: So, if you’ll remember, Tomomi was the last person to wear the mask before it was sealed away. This means that somehow, the mask killed Yuriko, Kumi and Michiko before Tomomi’s death.

: “You didn’t force it on her, right? So it’s all Tomomi’s misunderstanding!”

: Honestly, I don’t think you’re going to be all that reasonable if you’ve just had a mask burn half your face off.

: “Maybe so. But… I can’t say with absolute confidence that that’s true.”

: “Maybe some part of me really was gloating over how much better I was.”

: “Maybe I was just acting like Tomomi’s best friend, when I never really cared. Maybe I was too in love with the idea of being ‘considerate Saeko’… and I only ended up hurting her.”

: “Ms. Saeko…”

: “Enough!”

: “…”

: “Yeesh… it’s so cold…”

: “Oh! This can’t be…”

: “What’s up?”

: “Huh. Come to think of it, the sky’s still a weird color…”

: “Wh-What’s going on!?”

: “Oh crap… oh crap…! Not cool! We just defeated it!”

: Meet Nyx. In this game, Nyx is kind of a plot hole. She’s supposed to be Tomomi’s Persona - she’ll even tell you this if you get the bad ending to Snow Queen. The problem is that doesn’t make sense, because Tomomi wasn’t around when the tower guardians died.

: There’s no real explanation for why Nyx was in the mask, or how Nyx was apparently in Mikage-cho for years before Kandori and SEBEC even showed up.

: The explanation for the mask is supposed to be that Nyx, not Tomomi, was the one killing people. The line about Nyx being Tomomi’s Persona isn’t accurate - at least, I don’t think it is. Nyx is effectively an SMT-style demon, not a Persona.

: “I shall enshroud this world in black and white; void and sorrow.”

: “What!?”

: “Foolish mortals who cling to hope… I shall teach you a lesson! I have not yet given up on the Eternal Night.”

: There’s also the principal’s line at the beginning of the route where she said Saeko was the last person to wear the mask. I’m pretty sure that’s also a plot hole, because it’s pretty clear that was Tomomi.

: “Huh!? What was that about?”

: This explanation makes no fucking sense! The tower guardians all died before Tomomi probably even attended St. Hermelin! I think the writers honestly just stopped giving a fuck when they realized they had to somehow fit Snow Queen into the SEBEC timeline.

: Anyway, I did some digging, and it looks like Nyx is basically there because Snow Queen is sort of a remake of one of the plot lines from SMT If. I really should get around to playing that, though my experience with SMT 1 kind of turned me off to the SNES SMT games. Incidentally, the LP of If on the archive was made before the English translation romhack and was done on an emulator, so maybe…

: “That’s the most likely scenario.”

: “Thanks for the explanation. I think I’m finally starting to get what’s going on here. So if we don’t defeat that Queen, we can’t go home or take a hot bath!”

: “It hasn’t been long since this started, and look how much you’ve all grown.”

: “Aww, well, I only made it this far 'cause I had everyone backing me up. There’s, like, no way I would’ve made it by myself…”

: “Yeah, thanks to these guys, well… I don’t know how to say this, but… it’s like I understand for the first time why I’m alive.”

: “Whoa, that sounds REALLY cool!”

: “Sh-shut up! Let’s go, Jihei!”

: God dammit I knew I shouldn’t have bought that Yakuza 0 soundtrack. You mean return to yourself with message for you, if you had to wake up, do the forever? Return to yourself, all you need is to be free? Half the lyrics to that song are in English and I don’t understand them.

: “That reflection… my heart was so awful that I couldn’t look straight at it…”

: “It’s not just you, Ms. Tomomi. I’m sure anyone’s reflection would be horrible in that mirror.”

: Moreover, why does Nyx have the mirror from the Snow Queen story in the first place?

: “Not very many people in the world with a truly pure heart…”

: “Speak for yourself! I’m innocent as a young girl, pure as an angel, and… never mind.”

: “I bet I’d look like some kind of monster.”

: Ayase is a monster.

: “If you looked right now, I know you wouldn’t see a monster… I know! You should keep carrying the Demon’s Mirror with you. I bet it would protect you from misfortune.”

: Yeah I mean, maybe then we can cleanse Nyx with the power of Jesus just like in the story.

: The Spiegel Shield is an armor piece only Jihei can equip, because I don’t think the writers for this game actually read the original Snow Queen story. It’s also the best hand armor in the game. This is your reward for getting all 12 mirror shards.

: The costume is the “Spiegel Set”, and you can only get it (and the shield) if you’ve obtained all twelve mirror shards. I don’t know what she’s talking about when she says the hero though, given that Gerda is the closest thing to a hero in that story. Unless she’s talking about Kay, but then the “Spiegel” name makes no sense.

: “It was kept near the box with the Snow Queen’s mask, to keep the seal strong.”

: “Well, that’s one piece of good news. No idea where the storage room is in this Ice Castle, but it sounds like it’s worth hunting for.”

: “Ah… if only I’d met you all sooner… I’ll be watching from above with the past Queens so no one else ends up like us. Thank you.”

: “It’s people like me that make it hard for others to trust the ones around them…”

: You know, it’d be nice if any of this character development carried over to the other route.

: And that’s the last we’ll see of Tomomi. There’s some optional party dialogue here, so let’s do that first.

: “You have a look in your eye that says there’s nothing you can’t do. I have a feeling you’re capable of taking care of the rest. Please sever the curse of the mask! It’s brought pain to so many students! I’m counting on you…”

: She’s not wrong. What we’re about to go into is bar none the longest dungeon in the game.

: “Does it feel a little warmer to you? Y’think the Queen’s losing her power?”

: “Oh, yeah! Maybe that door that was frozen shut up to now is open!?”

: “Night Queen? Sounds like some hostess at a Ginza club. How strong could she be? You guys’ll do just fine without me. …I’m joking! C’mon, let’s go!”

: Right across from the Cafeteria, there’s a door that was previously frozen shut. We can get in there now.

: Talking to the party member you didn’t pick will have them give you an item. Nanjo’s is the middleground: we already picked up a Phurba Dagger in Thanatos Tower. It’s a decent weapon that boosts Agility, and Elly’s currently using it. Jihei doesn’t have much of a reason to because his Agility is already as high as it goes.

: If you didn’t pick Brown, he’ll give you a Scorching Tablet (Megidolaon fusion item). Elly will give you a Full Moon Tablet, which teaches a Persona Mediarahan (party full heal). I’m pretty sure you can get Full Moon Tablets from the medicine store, so they’re the least useful.

: The second floor of the Ice Castle is full of enemies from basically everything past Deva Yuga in the SEBEC route. We’re going to do some grinding here, but not until we reach the 9th floor. Let’s post the map.

: As you can see, the second floor is a giant conveyor belt maze.

: While the room itself is a giant mass of squares, this is what the route looks like to get to the next floor. This floor in particular is a direct callback to SMT 1 - there’s a room almost identical to this in the Messian headquarters building.

: The third floor has three distinct routes we can take - two lead to items and one leads to a room that’s just got some optional dialogue.

: Taking the southern route puts us here, in a room with… how the hell did Mariko get here?

: The weird thing is, if Persona 1 takes place in SMT If’s universe, people should already know about demons being a thing.

: Anyway, the reason we’re here is because this closet has a Mars 133, which is significantly better for Elly than the gun we were able to buy her in Thanatos Tower.

: Next up is the pointless room in the middle.

: This room looks like the room we got the Snow Queen mask from, but it’s not.

: “Hunh? H-Hey, look… there’s something on the floor. I-I-Is it a 10,000-yen bill? 'Cause if it is, dibs!”

: I checked the guide to be sure, and there’s no items in here.

: “Dibs, you hear me!? I saw it first!”

: “Oh, Yukino, please. I would never steal money like that. In fact, I’ll offer it to you. No, no, seriously.”

: “You moron. What I’m saying is, that’s not a 10,000-yen bill!”

: “Huh? O-ohh… you’re right. Aww…”

: “Totally stupid. There’s no doubt you’ll pay the piper.”

: “U-urgh! Why’s Ayase saying that now!?”

: Correction that I learned only after I got through the worst part of this dungeon: the Spiegel gear is in here. There’s a note on the floor somewhere that you have to pick up and then you can find it. I’m not going back for it.

: On this floor, we start encountering enemies like Titania, who showed up in the Alaya Cavern in the other route.

: The four nuke strategy always pays off. Always.

: The other room just has a Crimson Tablet in it, which is a fusion item we don’t need or want. The fourth floor is… a kick in the dick, to be honest.

: You’ll notice these stairs fairly close to where you enter the fourth floor. These are part of a puzzle.

: Just past those stairs going down is a single damage floor which marks the beginning of a maze through a room full of holes that will drop you down to the third floor. That’s what the stairs are for.

: So what’s our reward for getting to the end of this maze?

: A hole that drops us to the third floor again, that’s what!

: Hee-ho-kun is here, and he’s had the ultimate Persona fusion items on him the entire time. See? There was totally a reason I went over who he is.

: These are the items for Ayase, Brown, and Yukino, respectively. You get to choose who gets one if you do not have all 5 ambrosia, but we do. However, we’re not using any of the ultimate Personas, because I am not grinding that again (and we don’t need it). I will, however, Personalog them.

: Ayase’s ultimate Persona, Freyr, isn’t all that bad. His weaknesses suck, but at least he learns a ma-dyne spell. The Caesar Leg he can be traded in for is the best leg armor in the game. Interestingly, Freyr only shows up in the Sega CD remake of SMT 1 and not the SNES version.

: On the other hand, Brown’s Persona, Tyr, is GARBAGE. Look at that shit! He has the lowest magic stats of any of the ultimate Personas, the last move he learns KILLS HIM WHEN HE USES IT, and he’s weak to all the elements!

: Durga is honestly kind of an anomaly. I don’t understand what the logic behind her was game-design wise: she’s not great against Nyx, and that’s pretty much the only thing you’d ever use her against. Her stats are also really low (just barely above Tyr’s) for some reason. She’s also weak to most of the attacks Nyx uses.

: Finally, we have Elly’s ultimate Persona, summoned using the Judgement Contract. Michael is easily the best of the ultimate Personas - sure, he doesn’t learn a ma-dyne spell, but he makes up for that by having amazing resistances and Tarukaja. I would grind to 62 to get this for her, but Armaiti has the same resistances and can learn Megidolaon. If you do manage to grind this out, you’re pretty much guaranteed to win against Nyx even if you set the game to auto-battle.

: Just outside the room with Hee-ho-kun is another hole, which drops us…

: Back on the second floor, not far from where we started. This is where I wish I had known the Spiegel set was on the third floor, because I’d have grabbed it on the way up.

: Back on the fourth floor, shit starts getting annoying. First, Berith shows up. Berith is immune to magic and annoying to gun down. Worse, he’s higher level than the party is and we simply don’t have the negotiation technique to get his card (that’d be Nanjo) so we have to make him fuck off.

: Eventually, we reach the gate to Hell. Just trust me on this, the next four floors are going to be the worst thing in this game.

: This room has Raiho and Reiho in it, and the first thing we want to do is open the closet and get a Kouma Staff for Brown.

: Raiho is an asshole, and here’s why. Let me just… I’m just gonna show you the map. I can’t for the life of me describe the route you take through the next area.

: Yeah. It’s a giant staircase maze. The trick to this is following the two Stanley Parable Adventure Lines and never, ever deviating from them even slightly. The orange one gets you to most of the items, while the blue one is the one you want to follow to make progress.

: Here’s what makes this part suck. Most of the encounters are going to be this. If you’ll remember, Dakini (in front with the swords) reflects nuclear damage. Dominion (in the back) reflects all spells. Therefore, our only recourse is gunning everything down.

: Our first stop is on the 5th floor after going up to… I think the 7th and then going down a ways. This is honestly kind of like navigating the Zero in Kentucky Route Zero - you don’t.

: Wait… what? How? How did Maki get here?

: “Check out that painting… it’s all black. Freaky…”

: “Be careful! This could be one of the Queen’s traps!”

: What is this, some kind of reverse Genki Rockets song?

: “How can you withstand the pain? You have each other… Ms. Saeko… your family… people you can rely on. But I’m always alone. I can only watch the happiness of others.”

: On a side note, what little the manga shows of Snow Queen actually has Maki as the Snow Queen rather than Tomomi.

: “Wait a sec, are you…?”

: “You can never understand how I feel! I’ll destroy this place… I’ll destroy the whole school!”

: Our next stop is on the 7th floor, after about half an hour of stumbling around because I didn’t understand what the Stanley Parable Adventure Line ™ was trying to tell me. By the way, the one guide on Gamefaqs to this is wrong.

: “Hey, have you seen my Daddy?”

: “Your Daddy? Huh, maybe she’s lost.”

: “Hey little girl, what are you doing here? You should go home. It’s, like, really dangerous.”

: “Ayase! Won’t you please try to be more cautious? Your carelessness has gotten us into a lot of trouble! I’d appreciate if you made more of an effort to learn from your mistakes.”

: “Sh-shut up! Get off my case! What if she’s really looking for her dad? Are you really gonna leave her by herself!?”

: “Sorry, but nobody I know wears a mask.”

: “Oh. Okay then.”

: There’s a sword in this room for Nanjo if you have him, but we don’t.

: Finally, there’s this room. There’s technically two others, but they’re way out of the way and only give kinda mediocre rewards.

: The Justice Coin isn’t great attack-wise, but it makes a decent stat stick.

: “Excuse me. Have you seen me?”

: “Huh? What’s she trying to say?”

: “Hey little girl, what are you doing here? You should go home. It’s, like, really dangerous.”

: “Ayase! Can’t you think rationally for a change? How could a small girl be here? She clearly must be a monster!”

: “Sh-shut up! Get off my case! I thought she was in trouble, so I talked to her, that’s all! I’m not mean like you.”

: “I’m wearing clothes like yours, and I have a white mask on.”

: “You’re looking for a student from this school? Sorry, but nobody I know wears a mask.”

: God dammit, Brown.

: Here’s the other reason this area sucks. When you’re not fighting Dominion, you’re fighting Succubi. They’re not nearly as dangerous as they were in Alaya Cavern (mostly because it’s a lot harder to put 5 characters to sleep) but they still absorb magic.

: I spent probably the next half hour following the Stanley Parable Adventure Line ™ to the ninth floor.

: At the end of the 8th floor is a room very much like that room at the end of Deva Yuga with the light-up floor.

: “It would have been easier if you had just waited for the Eternal Night to fall. But if you insist… I shall grant your wish with despair. You won’t find me as easy as Tomomi… hmhmhmhmhmhm…”

: Kandori offers an elevator ride, but he’ll only send us down - and once he does, he won’t be there at the bottom to bring us back up.

: Floor nine is where I’m probably going to do a lot of grinding. The thing is, we could cheese Nyx down really easily, but only Jihei would survive. Let me post the map, just so you can see that the Damage Floor Guy at Atlus finally got his wish.

: Anyway, I’m going to have to spend a considerable amount of time grinding: the problem is that most of the enemies on the higher floors are from the final dungeon of the SEBEC route - and if you’ll recall, the enemies in that dungeon didn’t give as much EXP as just doing random encounters on the street. I might also need to go back in order to get spell cards. Next time, we’ll kill Nyx and finish Snow Queen.

[Timrod]

: So, uh… I posted the last LP update not knowing how long it’d take to get the results I wanted for the final battle against Nyx. It didn’t take that long.

: I figured it’d be kind of a cop-out if I didn’t show how to get the Spiegel gear. The Spiegel gear is not even remotely worth it. Talking to Kandori on the 8th floor and telling him to send you back to the 1st floor will put you back here. I didn’t cap it, but he says something like “Heh, you came all the way up here just to go back down?”

: My goal for Nyx was to get a team very similar to what we had for Pandora - that is to say, with as many reflects and absorbs as possible. Elly’s Persona was trash, so I fused Tensen Nyannyan as a stopgap. I’m not going to Personalog it because Tensen Nyannyan is just a bastardization of Taishan Nyang Nyang, the Chinese name for Apsaras. The wiki also gets her stats wrong, which is another reason I’m not doing a Personalog.

: Anyway, the Spiegel gear is extremely well hidden. Remember how Brown made that joke about finding a 10,000-yen bill?

: This is the confusing part. What you have to do is walk past the frozen girl, then turn around and press X in front of her, while facing the way Jihei is facing in the screenshot. This will let you find a note.

: This is the only good piece of the Spiegel set, and it’s useless for Jihei. I wish I could put this on Elly, because it’d actually be worth a shit there.

: Back to the 9th floor. You can see that everyone in the party is poisoned - as it turns out, about half the damage floors here poison you instead of doing damage.

: What you’re supposed to do here is walk around the damage floors… or you could just use a core shield. The gem store sells them.

: The 9th floor isn’t the best for EXP, but with an underlevelled party it’s the best you’re going to get. The encounters are shaken up a little bit from how they were in Avidya World: this encounter here with four Vetalas is worth some 9,800 EXP.

: The 10th floor is technically better EXP, but has two major issues. Paimon is one of them - they reflect Nuclear, are frequently paired with enemies that reflect Gun, and have a combination of Curse damage and instakill spells.

: Rangda is the other problem. They’re not nearly as deadly as Paimon is, but they reflect Nuclear and have a lot of HP.

: I actually explored the entirety of the 9th floor using core shields. There are a lot of damage floors here, but with a core shield you can go right from the healing spot down to the stairs.

: I spent a few hours grinding Elly to 62, specifically so I could fuse Michael. With Michael, Elly can pretty much solo Nyx… even if Michael’s moveset kinda sucks.

: Nyx is immune to Expel (which is the damage type Makouha does) but Tarukaja is extremely useful for gunning stuff down faster.

: Jihei gets levelled to 60/59, and I fuse Barbatos for him. Ignore where it says Odin, I wound up giving that to Ayase. Barbatos, if you’ll recall from the SEBEC route, is much like Michael in that he reflects magic.

: Yukino gets levelled to 55, and gets Armaiti. Armaiti has the same resists Michael does with one big exception: she doesn’t reflect or nullify status effects the way Michael does.

: Brown had Tensen Nyannyan until I tossed Lilim on him. This makes three out of five party members that reflect magic, and one who absorbs it.

: With that setup, I went to the 10th floor and pushed right through. Everyone but Ayase is basically invincible.

: Fafnir and Fenrir are both giant sacks of EXP. I managed to get Ayase up to like… level 53 I think… by the end of the 10th floor. Theoretically, if I was insane enough, I could have gone back to the 1st floor and fused a Succubus for Jihei (which absorbs magic and reflects status) and then given Barbatos to Ayase. I didn’t.

: Most of the 10th floor is a giant dark zone, but with a map it’s easy enough to get through.

: Here we are, at Nyx’s boss room.

: Meet the dumbest-looking boss outside of Pandora.

: Nyx gets her own boss theme, and it sounds like it belongs in an SNES Final Fantasy game. Anyway, Nyx has a gimmick that’s kind of like Pandora’s only way more dickish.

: This position, which she starts in, is called “Center Head”. In this form, Nyx takes 2x damage from weapons (which will do nothing anyway) and becomes extremely resistant but not immune to guns and magic.

: Center Head uses nothing but spells and a weak physical attack, alternating between Mabufudyne, Maragidyne, Mazandyne, and Maziodyne. You’ll notice that all of these are regular spells and not the resistance-penetrating ones that Pandora had.

: This is Nyx’s key weakness, and also how you can cheese her to death at a low level. See how Brown absorbed 592 damage? If you have Lilim, Nyx pretty much cannot kill you.

: This position is “Left Head”, where Nyx turns her face off and lets Maki do the work. Left Head is annoying because it can remove your buffs and also has a heal, as well as a move called All Guard. It does not have any attacks or damage spells.

: All Guard causes all attacks to miss for one round. Left Head takes 2x damage from guns and magic, but resists everything else.

: This position is “Right Head”, where Kandori takes over. Right Head has Makakaja, which increases magic damage, as well as some debuffs. The idea is that Right Head buffs with Makakaja and then switches to Center Head to cast ma-dyne spells.

: Theoretically, Nyx should be a really challenging (and kind of cheap) boss: it has a higher Agility than most of the party does, meaning it can cancel out your attacks by switching heads after you’ve chosen your actions but before they go off. With this setup, we can simply set the game to autobattle and gun her down.

: Like I said, Lilim will ignore every single thing Nyx can do without grinding at all. This setup was just overkill. I actually did a second run of this that I didn’t record where I had everyone guard, and I won simply by virtue of Nyx reflecting spells onto herself.

: I doubt it. I mean, it’s not like Atlus made an entire sequel about this or anything.

: “Your name was Suzakin, yes? I have a feeling we’ll meet each other again.”

: And with that, we’ve finished Snow Queen and also finished Persona 1. The ending is kind of weak, but you’ll see why.

: “Yeah, there’s still some business we’ve gotta take care of. Right, Jihei?”

: “We gotta find Maki… she looked like she was in pain to me.”

: “…Alright. Then you go do what you gotta do!”

: “You’re adults now, setting out on your own. I won’t stop you. But promise me this…”

: “Huh? Like what?”

: “Come back and see me before you get all old and wrinkled! And come back to report in when it’s all over with!”

: “You should try being in my shoes, getting yelled at every day by the vice principal!”

: “Haha… it looks like this incident has given him second thoughts, though. He asked me to thank you guys. Maybe now he won’t be so strict… for a while, at least.”

: “Hah! That cueball? As if!”

: “Oh, he’s not really all that bad. But anyway! You should stop chitchatting and get going before it’s too late!”

: “Right!”

: “The school’s returned to normal, but that’s only the beginning. Our true battle comes later. First, we must restore peace to our city.”

: “We’re still young… there’s a lot of life yet to fight through. I’ll rise to the challenge!”

: “Y’know, up to now, I’ve just been doing whatever I feel like. But when I see Yukino and the others try so hard, I feel like I can do way better.”

: “I dunno how exactly, but that can wait until after we save the town. Catch you later, Ms. Saeko!”

: Unfortunately, Yukino never becomes a teacher. In fact, I’m not even sure any of the Persona 1 cast wind up going to college.

: “Thanks for everything, Jihei! Looks like they have ideas for their future. How about you?”

: Well yeah I mean, we’ve still got Innocent Sin to do.

: “Great! You’ve done something amazing here. Savor that feeling and give it your all!”

: The game makes you wait until the end of the credits to find out how Snow Queen fits into the timeline.

: So yes, canonically Snow Queen happens before the SEBEC route. I believe Snow Queen is the canon version of events, so the entire beginning of the game happens differently.

: I can only imagine how much better the SEBEC route would’ve been if we never had Nanjo or Maki in the party and started at level 50+.

: And… that’s Persona 1. I think in the end that it’s not a bad game, it’s just a game with incredibly dated and flawed game mechanics. Someday, I’d love to see Atlus remake it in the canonical order and fix the SEBEC route so the plot sucks less.

: I’m probably going to need to go back and finish the alternate party dialog for SEBEC, but once I do that… it’s on to Persona 2: Innocent Sin.

[LaZodiac]

@Timrod

Nyx is effectively an SMT-style demon, not a Persona.

God I fucking love when they do that.

I’ll admit, this ending felt really anti climactic, especially for a “and then the adventure continues in the alt route, but you don’t get to play it” style ending. Ah well. Good LP, kinda rough game.

[SpammyV]

Oh so… the game just ends when you go Snow Queen. Alright.

Tomomi looks like she was always practicing her asymmetric sneer in case she turned into Two-Face so I’m glad to see her hard work paid off in the end.

Thank you for the LP! I’ve never played a Persona in my life so I really enjoyed following along.

[CommanderKeene]

Thanks for the LP. Like I said at the beginning, I could never finish this game, due to the incredibly dated game mechanics you mentioned. Unfortunately, they basically ruin the game for me.