From what I heard, that LP is only one of 5 paths. There are still the other paths, plus there’s no rule that you can’t LP the same game.
Click Here for Update 3
: Welcome back to Persona 2.
: The world map is similar to Persona 1’s, but also very different. For one thing, it controls a lot better. There’s random people on the street we can talk to, but most of them don’t have anything interesting to say.
: Persona 2 also dramatically simplifies the shop menu from how it was in Persona 1. Instead of crawling through a mall and forgetting where things were half the time (looking at you, Snow Queen) you get a menu of places you can go. Right now, we want to head to Shiraishi Ramen.
: Oh look, it’s the dev self-insert all grown up. Tanmen, if you’re curious, is a ramen dish with pork belly in it. Strawberry tanmen is a theoretically disgusting dish, but I find pretty much anything with pork in it to be nasty.
: At least the game shits all over him. You never even meet him in Eternal Punishment, because he gets chased off by assassins before the game starts. If you’ve played the Raidou games (or Soul Hackers) you might’ve heard of the Kuzunoha Detective Agency. I doubt they even trust him with a COMP or a GUMP.
: The game is going to make a whole lot of references to Devil Summoner, which has not been fan translated and seems kind of crap even if it was. PeaceDiner (why am I not surprised their name is a P1 reference) did an LP of Devil Summoner a few years ago that I’d definitely recommend you skim through.
: Gyoza are a kind of dumpling that Japanese cuisine borrows from China. They usually have pork and cabbage inside, but I’ve had vegetarian ones from a Chinese restaurant before. Actually, dessert Gyoza sounds like a really good idea - maybe do fruit instead of red beans and dip it in icing. I’d eat it.
: You say that, but Yakuza 0 established that every Asian restaurant is actually a front for an international arms smuggling ring. I’m not sure if this includes non-Asian restaurants that happen to be in Asia but I’m guessing it does. What I’m saying here is that I want to go to a pizza place and order the “special pizza” and the guy comes out of the back room with a giant fuckoff sword and a large special, no anchovies.
: Anyway, to figure out what we have to do next, we need to talk to Lisa, who for some reason just kinda… knows.
: Now, I got a bit confused here because I thought by “chief” she was referring to Kozy, so I went back to Sumaru Prison to see if she was still there. No, what we need to do is exit Kameya Alley and come back.
: This time, you’ll notice that there’s a new destination available: the Kuzunoha Detective Agency.
: “Th-that thing scared me… what the hell is this?”
: If you’ve read my Persona 1 LP, you’ll know who Tamaki is. Just in case you haven’t…
: Tamaki is the female protagonist from Shin Megami Tensei If. She’s also a point of controversy because she’s designed after a Japanese actress by the name of Yuki Uchida, who Tadashi Satomi (the scenario writer for Persona 1 and 2) had a massive crush on to the point of making a self-insert character and shipping it with her. There’s a very good reason Tadashi Satomi doesn’t work at Atlus anymore.
: “You guys spread those just to tease Tadashi!?”
: I am really, really surprised that Atlus didn’t hire someone to sit by Tadashi Satomi’s desk and blast an air horn into his ear any time he tried to do a self-insert or got horny for late-90s idols.
: This guy. The game never tells you this, and there’s no way you could know it unless you played Devil Summoner, but Todoroki is actually the protagonist of Devil Summoner… or rather, he’s being possessed by the protagonist of Devil Summoner. I’m going to post some spoilers for Devil Summoner as it was never localized and probably never will be.
: In Devil Summoner, the protagonist character dies pretty early into the game, and winds up possessing the body of a detective by the name of Kyouji Kuzunoha. At some point between Soul Hackers and Innocent Sin, the protagonist of Devil Summoner switched bodies to Todoroki’s.
: Here’s how rumors work, at least as far as I understand it. There’s two types: rumors you get from “rumormongers” and rumors you get from demons. The demon ones are all supposedly useless - they basically get you Personas with alternate spells that aren’t worth the trouble.
: I don’t think rumors work that fast.
: Char Siu ramen (also spelled “Chashu”) is a kind of ramen that originated in China. It’s made with sliced pork that’s been braised in “chashu sauce” which as far as I understand it is mostly just soy sauce.
: On a side note, banana char siu ramen sounds like something you’d have seen in one of those cookbooks from the 1960s where they thought it was acceptable to cover bananas in ham and then dip the resulting monstrosity in mayonnaise.
: You know, when they said she was an ex-spy who sold weapons, you’d think they’d mean guns and not guitar cases… unless the guitar case has a rifle in it.
: I have no idea how char siu ramen tastes, mostly because there’s a handful of ramen places in Connecticut, but I kind of want some even though I don’t usually eat pork because beef is the superior meat.
: Wonder who that could be?
: “Haime!? Really? I wonder if that’s Joker?”
: Lisa is about one step away from being one of those weeaboos that does the whole “Gomenasorry!” thing.
: “Let’s go back to Sevens, Tatsuya! Hanya might know something about Joker!”
: Here’s P2’s world map. Thankfully, they did away with the map being one contiguous thing like it was in Persona 1. No more memorizing exactly where everything is from everything else here.
: One thing that’s going to come up a few times in the next couple of minutes is the idea of the Pleiades, and this is the first real reference to them.
: The Pleiades are two things: a cluster of stars and a name for a group of Greek goddesses who were probably invented to explain the cluster of stars. The name means “Daughters of Pleione”, as the goddesses were said to be the daughters of Pleione and Atlas.
: The weird thing is, if you’ll look back at the clock in the cutscene (or at Tatsuya’s emblem in the first update) you’ll notice that they only have six stars. This is because the ancient Japanese recognized the constellation differently than the Greeks did… though why they picked the name Seven Sisters but used the Japanese constellation is a mystery.
: I had to dive down a fucking hole to find out what the deal with this is. Namu Amida Butsu is a chant (and apparently not a mantra) that’s part of something called Pure Land Buddhism.
: Pure Land Buddhism is a denomination of Buddhism based around worshipping a Buddha by the name of Amida Buddha (as opposed to the original Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama) who is also known as the “Buddha of Infinite Light and Life”. It’s apparently the main denomination of Buddhism in Japan. The chant “Namu Amida Butsu” means “I entrust myself to Amida Buddha”. Apparently, that chant isn’t meant to be a petition-style prayer, but whatever.
: “Take it easy, gramps! There’s no need to be scared. Long as I’m around, you got nothing to worry about!”
: “Are you talking about… that teacher who died in the clock tower?”
: This feels way too much like a standard medieval fantasy RPG.
: “Kehhei!? What’s going on!? Does this mean it isn’t enough to take the emblems off our uniforms!?”
: “Let’s hurry and find Principal Hanya! We need to lift the curse before my face and Tatsuya’s gets all messed up!”
: “Kehhei” is a Cantonese word that’s basically the equivalent of saying “Dammit!” I don’t know why Lisa would use that with the !? rather than just an exclamation point.
: As soon as we step into the school, we get our first random battle. You’ll notice in the (admittedly blurry due to the PSP’s video output) screenshot that the minimap turned yellow. Persona 2 has a “encounter tracker” mechanic much like a few of the SMT games where your minimap will change colors to show you how close you are to your next random encounter.
: So, let’s talk about Persona 2’s demon negotiations. Like the first game, all the enemies we face are traditional SMT demons rather than shadows. I actually answered no because… well, let’s see. I’ve done most of SMT 1, Persona 1, Persona 5, and about three minutes of Strange Journey before I deleted it off my flashcart because it sucked. I’m practically a qualified Devil Buster.
: Okay, fine. If you’re gonna guilt trip me…
: Just like Persona 1, we’ve got the emotion gauge back. It works exactly the same way as it did in P1: each character has a list of negotiation techniques and each demon has specific techniques that’ll make it feel a certain way. Unlike P1, there’s no optional party members so we don’t have to worry about a Kuchisake-onna situation where we can’t negotiate because we don’t have the right party member.
: The main difference is that instead of always wanting to max out Eager for spell cards, we now have two options. Maxing out Happy will cause the demon to make a pact with you. I’m not sure what that does other than unlock new dialog options and maybe change what the demons drop. I think you can use it the same way you used spell cards in P1 to make demons fuck off instantly via negotiation.
: There is a catch to this, though. Maxing out Angry will cause any pact you have with a demon to be broken. That’s not a huge deal, given that I think negotiations in P2 are less random than in P1.
: This part, right here? In the intro for the LP, I said that this game is largely considered a “two steps forward, one step back” situation from Persona 1. In exchange for fixing the godawful EXP system, we have to deal with this. You see, Personas in P2 are not made from spell cards or demon fusion. Instead, you have to collect Tarot Cards like it’s fucking Yu-gi-oh or some shit and then believe in the heart of the cards to get new Personas.
: Okay, fine. You can go without me repeatedly spamming Agi at you because you’re immune to bullets in pretty much every SMT game that has guns in it.
: The first place we want to head (or at least, that I went to) is the Courtyard.
: When we got here earlier, there was a statue of Hanya on the pedestal. I wonder where it’s gone off to? My bet is that Jihei and his party showed up and tore it down.
: Nope, the statue’s just moving around.
: “Yep. It’s movin’.”
: “…So that settles it?”
: “I think so.”
: “Gaaaaah! Hell no! That’s impossible! How could something this ridiculous actually happen!? M-my 3,000 yen!”
: I should mention that while they’re talking, the statue is walking circles around the Narurato Stone.
: Also, I think this dialog right here is better than most of the dialog in P1. If this was P1, we’d have Mark going “The statue’s moving, guys!” and Nanjo responding “You dunce! According to my calculations there’s a 51% chance that the statue is actually just an animatronic.” like the Jimmy Neutron-ass motherfucker he is.
: As soon as I went back into the school, I got into an encounter with Nightmare (Moon is the demon group she’s in). The good news is that we can negotiate for tarot cards even if the demon is higher level than we are.
: If I remember right, every playable character in this game (with… two exceptions?) can be gay. The weird part about this is that modern Atlus is pretty much the exact opposite - see that one scene in Persona 5 or Catherine Full Body and the controversy surrounding that. I don’t really understand why they made that turn other than that most of the people who made this game don’t work at Atlus anymore.
: However, for negotiation purposes, this is the right answer.
: Most of the demons in the school just want to go to school, and I feel like if Jack Frost can do it (see: SMT If…) they can too.
: Unfortunately, I don’t think Moon-type demons are the magic-absorbing powerhouses they were in Persona 1. Lilim in particular got nerfed so hard there’s almost no reason to fuse her.
: The game doesn’t really tell us this, but we’re trying to get to the Principal’s Office, which is on the third floor. I should’ve done some grinding before we went there but that’s fine. That’s another issue with P2: if you know where you’re going, you won’t run into enough encounters to be appropriately levelled. You also don’t get EXP from negotiations.
: I fucked up a negotiation with this poltergeist, so I had to fight it.
: One neat thing Persona 2 does is eliminates the “battle line” we saw in Persona 1. The party (and enemies) will move around the battlefield as they fight. Eikichi starts closest to the enemy because he was the one negotiating.
: Lisa’s main weapon is kung fu, making her this party’s Reiji. I wish Reiji was playable in this game, because he was criminally underused in P1.
: Remember how I said the only way that guitar case would be useful is if it had a gun in it? The guitar case IS a gun!
: No more dumbass “one character at a time” EXP system to deal with, no more P-levels.
: Unlike P1, Tatsuya gets a small stat bonus on levelup outside of the points we can assign. You’ll notice that Magic Attack and Magic Defense are no longer linked to the Persona. Most guides for this game will tell you to max out Dexterity and put a few points in Vitality, so we’ll do that.
: To get an idea of how low the encounter rate is in P2, I managed to get here from the start of the school with only three random encounters.
: “Wai! Hey, you! Have you seen the principal?”
: Yeah, I’m sure he can handle Joker when he got wrecked by Hypnos in P1.
: “The great Michel comes all the way to Sevens and its own principal isn’t here? sigh The great rock 'n roll swindle!”
: “Okay! Time to introduce to one and all the headlining act, yours truly, Mi–”
: This is like, the second time in 20 minutes we’ve seen Eikichi flat on the floor.
: “WHAT!? Okay, back up! This whole thing happened because YOU summoned that Joker!”
: “So take some responsibility and do something about this!”
: Didn’t he say he’d handle it back like… ten minutes ago?
: “Kehhei! Now you’ve crossed a line, buster! How was I supposed to know at the time what would happen!?”
: “And what’s with all your big talk!? You’re just an Undie Boss who pervs on people by yanking their pants down! Undie Boss! Undie Boss!”
: Lisa will now be known as Ginko for the rest of the game. This is because “gin” is the Japanese word for silver (as a play on her last name), with the “ko” part being a common ending for female names the way adding an “a” or “ina” is in English. This is also probably a reference to Devil Summoner, where there’s a character by the name of Madame Ginko who runs a club and gives jobs to the protagonist.
: Meet Maya Amano, the protagonist of Eternal Punishment. Her friend next to her might be a bit familiar to those of you who read the Persona 1 LP.
: “Things seem to be getting steamy here. C’mon, kids, not everybody wants to get caught up in a lover’s quarrel!”
: “At times, I’m am ambitious reporter! Other times, a mild-mannered editor! But my true identity is…”
: Oh shit! Yukino! You’re still level 60 and have that Armaiti I built for you, right? I mean, unless you levelled up to 99 in the SEBEC route that canonically happened after Snow Queen.
: I guess I was wrong when I said none of the P1 cast went to college, because Yukino apparently did.
: “Really!? Great! Here, babe, take my picture for the cover of the–”
: "We came here to do interviews for a special report we’re working on, called ‘The Rumors of High Schoolers.’ "
: “The emblem curse here at Sevens is the best known one after the Joker Game, you know.”
: “But it’s been chaos since just after we got here. No one’s been willing to give us an interview!”
: “What’s going on here!? Can you tell us what you know? Is it related to what we came here to interview people about?”
: “Hmm… I’m not sure I buy that.”
: “True stories, babies! We’re not looking for Sevens’ principal and we certainly never got stomped by any Joker!”
: Side note here, Yukino is 20 and Eikichi is 16. Lisa and Tatsuya are both 17.
: “If you’re trying to cover it up, I take it that it’s a pretty big scoop! In which case… we’re definitely not letting you go!”
: “Look out! You gotta stay back, ladies!”
: These are basic zombies, the kind Yukino killed probably a hundred of before Snow Queen even started. She’s got Armaiti, one Megidolaon and they’re toast.
: “H-How do you know about demons!?”
New Persona: Maia
Origin: Greece
Persona 2 Original
Returning Persona: Vesta
Origin: Rome
First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei If… (SNES)
: Wait… what? Where’s Armaiti? Atlus really should’ve put in some kind of save transfer thing like they did with IS and EP.
: “Whoa! What’s wrong? Were you that scared?”
: “Huh…? Why am I crying? It’s so strange, but… sniff I can’t stop…”
: “How weird… I felt it, too. What was that wave of nostalgia…?”
: “Could you elaborate? I know more than you’d think about demons. Maybe I could help you kids out a bit.”
: I don’t know why, but this feels like something Jotaro would say in Diamond is Unbreakable. It’s entirely possible they were modelling Yukino’s dialog after it: the manga run of Jojo Part 4 ended in 1995.
: “You mean you three have the same powers I do? Persona, huh… so it’s not just my guardian angel… and wow, I can’t believe you’re a Persona-user too, Yukki!”
: As far as I know, it’s a coincidence (and not a reference to Revelations Persona where Yukino was called “Yuki”) that Maya calls her that. I think I mentioned this before, but Eternal Punishment uses the Revelations Persona names for the P1 characters.
: “Have you guys never played it?”
: I’m pretty sure this is another line almost entirely ripped from Diamond is Unbreakable, from the first time Jotaro meets Josuke.
: “I played a kid’s game like that in a dream once, but…”
: “A dream…!?”
: “Lisa, right? Know anything about this?”
: “No, nothing… I’ve never played any game like that…”
: “Haime!? Seriously!? You’re gonna come along with us?”
: “You three are chasing Joker himself, right? If we could catch him, that’d be one hell of a scoop! Plus, if we go with you, maybe I can find out how I became a Persona user.”
: “I’ll tag along. Now that I know this guy’s in cahoots with demons, I can’t sit back and do nothing.”
: “Hold on a sec! Our only lead is Principal Hanya, and he’s not here. There’s nothing for us to do even if you come along!”
: You’d think Yukino would have something to say here, given that she’s met Hanya and knows he’s not a Persona user.
: “But Maya-san, how are we supposed to deal with this? Do you have a plan?”
: “I know! Let’s destroy all the emblems in the school. Getting rid of the cause of the problem should help, right?”
: “If rumors ARE coming true, the curse’ll be lifted once the emblems are gone. But could that really be happening?”
: “Think positive” and “Let’s think positive!” are Maya’s catch phrases.
: “Like… the clocks in the classrooms? Their faces have the same design as our emblem.”
: In Japan (at least, supposedly) the Pleiades constellation has a few different names. One of them… is Subaru. That’s where the car company by the same name gets their emblem, which would technically be the same as the one Seven Sisters uses. If the curse extends to those, that might be a problem.
: We can talk to all of our party members, so let’s do that.
: Essentially, the entirety of Persona 1 is non-canon. In fact, there is nowhere that actually shows the canon sequence of events in that game. Persona 2 assumes that Yukino went on the SEBEC route after Snow Queen.
: Not to mention a giant penis monster and Nyx.
: SEBEC’s Kandori, who got defeated by the auto-battle button.
: Once we try to leave the room…
: “Could I bother you two fine misses for a second? I’ve got a special present for you as our new allies!”
: “This is so cute! Can I really have one? Look, Yukki, they’re a matching set!”
: I’m not going to ask where Eikichi got a pair of pink handguns, nor am I going to ask why he didn’t mention that he had them until just now.
: Yukino’s weapon of choice, just in case you didn’t read the Persona 1 LP, is a set of throwing knives.
: Anyway, I had to cut recording short thanks to the asshole across the street, who had one of the thirty or so dead trees in his hard fall on a power line for the fifth time in two years. Next time, we’ll go on a quest to destroy every clock in Seven Sisters High School and also grind because I forgot to do that.
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SMT 4 is a game I could potentially do, since as far as I’m aware no completed LP exists of it. However, I’d have to do it on an emulator (due to 3DS capture hardware being incredibly expensive and the hack-based alternative not being great either) which I’m a little averse to.
There are actually four routes, and I’m not sure how I feel about playing through the game three times (two of the four routes are basically identical). I couldn’t finish SMT 1 on real hardware, and I’m sure that while If is a little less brutal it’s still an early SMT game. The last thing I’d want is to start another LP I can’t finish.
They are. I kind of wish Atlus had re-done the portraits for Persona 1 the same way they did for this game. It’s kind of jarring going from P1’s artstyle to this.
I love Eikichi but damn is he a fucking idiot sometimes.
My dude you popped a god out of your head by focusing real hard. Why did you take this bet?
Best I can find for this is that Ginko means Bank, and given she has a rich family… well, that follows. I coulda swore the instruction book had a guide of her Chinese and an explanation for the nickname but I can’t find it…
Yeah, I went and looked it up and edited the post. It’s actually a play on her last name, because “gin” is the Japanese word for silver. It’s also a reference to Devil Summoner, which must’ve been awkward for the localizers because Devil Summoner was never translated and Soul Hackers wouldn’t be for several years after the PSP version of Innocent Sin.
Click here for Update 4
: Welcome to Update 4, in which I realize that Persona 2 is not exactly the best Persona game.
: Right outside the Principal’s Office, I run into Ratatoskr, who is a legendary squirrel from Norse mythology who runs up and down Yggdrasil delivering messages. In this game, Ratatotskr is a furry.
: There’s also Pixie, which we need to encounter a few times if we want some decent spells later.
: The problem with the negotiation system is this. Persona 2 is an extremely slow game - and I don’t mean the pacing. There’s long load screens before and after every battle, and the menus move very slowly compared to Persona 1’s. Negotiations in particular suck because every time you want to negotiate, you have to go through this menu, select a person, then hit “confirm” at the bottom.
: You can use two or three characters at once to negotiate, as seen here.
: This is another problem. The negotiation techniques all have lengthy animations (and sometimes multiple text boxes) associated with them. The animations are also very slow.
: Just like in Persona 1, there’s a free heal spot in the first dungeon which can be abused to grind. Unfortunately, the enemies here give fuck all for EXP.
: Shortly thereafter, we have our first Persona Mutation.
: There are four kinds of mutations, and all of them are things you want. They are:
-
Stats Increased - Does exactly what it says, increases all of the Persona’s stats. There’s a cap on how high they can go.
-
Two Ranks Up - Increases the Persona’s Rank by 2. Just like in Persona 1, Personas have six “Ranks”, with each one giving higher stats and access to more spells. At Rank 6, you can “return” a Persona to the Velvet Room to get an item.
-
Mutation Skill - Every Persona has a hidden “Mutation Skill” that is learned this way. Some are better than others.
-
Evolution - Some Personas can evolve into higher forms or into different Personas in the same Arcana tree. I’m not entirely sure how this works.
: There’s seven classrooms we need to enter to smash the clocks inside: three on the first floor, two on the second floor, and two on the third floor.
: Right outside Room 1-A, the party learns their second Fusion spell: Blazing Burst. Fusion spells are pretty much exclusive to Persona 2 (P3 uses them but not nearly to the same degree).
: Fusion spells give you a cut-in image when used (this is something they did in the PSP remake). They’re cast by having two or more party members using certain spells on their turn. Blazing Burst requires two characters to use Agi (the lowest-tier fire spell) back to back. Right now, only Tatsuya and Yukino can do this. Fusion spells will only appear on your list if you’ve cast them once: you basically have to use a guide (or guess) to figure out how to use them.
: By the way, you might ask why in the last update I said we want to level Dexterity in the same way we levelled Agility in Persona 1. Let me explain.
: Most Fusion spells do damage based on how high the Dexterity of the characters performing them is. That’s why.
: I got a bunch of tarot cards off Pixies, and we want to use those, so let’s head to the Velvet Room.
: Christ! What’s wrong with your face!? I mean, I know Igor is supposed to be a bit freaky looking…
: Anyway, the Velvet Room has changed significantly since Persona 1. In Persona 1, Igor fused demons into Personas by calling them on the phone. Here, things are a bit… different.
: Nameless and Belladonna were both in Persona 1’s Velvet Room, but you couldn’t talk to them.
: The Demon Painter is supposed to be Kazuma Kaneko, the artist who did all of the original artwork for the early SMT games. He has a use if you find blank tarot cards, of which we have none.
: Belladonna is a deaf singer, and Nameless is a blind pianist.
: Anyway, this is the problem with Persona 2. Unlike every other Persona game, you have to grind negotiations to get tarot cards to make Personas. There’s a few familiar faces on the list.
: Pascal the Dog costs 178 Fortune cards. I have no idea where the hell we’re going to find that many.
: Just like in Persona 1, we have the option of giving certain items to a fused Persona. Skill cards give skills, Incense cards boost stats, and I have no idea what Material cards do.
: Is this what a Stevie Wonder concert is like?
Returning Persona: Pixie
Origin: England
First Appearance: Megami Tensei II (NES)
: You’ll notice that none of the Personas in Persona 2 use the old art from the SNES games or Devil Summoner. I have no idea why Atlus did this and then re-used the shit out of Nocturne’s models in Persona 3 and 4.
: We can only hold a total of 10 personas, and that counts the five we have equipped. The guide for this game says you want to equip Pixie to Tatsuya. That’s wrong. You want to equip it to Maya, because her Persona SUCKS.
: Most of the rooms are exactly the same: you go into the room, smash the clock, and either a party member or an NPC will confirm you’ve smashed the clock. 1-D is a bit different though: I think because the developers assumed you would do the rooms starting from the principal’s office on the third floor and working your way down.
: This line is super awkward.
: “No… just some fatty called Kozy…”
: “Wow… so Hanakouji-san goes to Sevens… haha… wow…”
: “Aiyah! Stooooop!”
: “H-Hey, Undie Boss! I know Miyabi really well… what was your relationship with her?”
: “Gah! Hold it in… keep it together…”
: “Sooo… uh… how do you know her?”
: “O-our relationship? Well…”
: "She’s my ex-girlfriend! We were dating in grade school! We broke up eventually, but I still can’t forget her face when she cried and said, ‘Eikichi-kun, I can’t bear to be apart!’ "
: Anyway, I spend most of the next 30 minutes or so running around the school smashing all the clocks. The game is nice enough to put NPCs outside the rooms that do not have clocks in them.
: One thing I also figured out is that you can change the turn order for the party. This is why we don’t pump Agility like we did in Persona 1, because most of the time Tatsuya would just be waiting for the slower party members to be in the right position to do a fusion spell.
: This is why we got that Pixie, by the way. Around the second floor, the Pixie ranked up and learned Garu, allowing us to use Mega Blaze, which consists of two people using Agi and one using Garu. Mega Blaze hits all enemies, and given that a good amount of the enemies we’re fighting are immune to physical damage, this is a pretty good way to take them out.
: Once you go through all the classrooms, you’ll get a prompt to go to the Teacher’s Lounge, which is on the second floor.
: If you haven’t read the Persona 1 LP, Ms. Saeko was Yukino’s teacher at St. Hermelin and also the person who took her out of the delinquent lifestyle. Yukino saved her from getting taken over by Nyx in the Snow Queen route.
: “Y-Yukino…? It really is you, Yukino! I transferred here last year. But never mind me – what are YOU doing here? Don’t tell me you’re redoing high school…?”
: “Oh, no. I’m on assignment! I have a part-time job as an assistant photographer, so I came to cover a story.”
: “Aiyah! Ms. Saeko and Yukino-san know each other?”
: “She was a student of mine at my last school.”
: "Your timing in coming here wasn’t very good, I’m afraid. As you can see, we’re in a bit of a crisis…
: “Yeah, about that, there’s something I need to tell you…”
: There’s three clocks in the teacher’s lounge, each with a convenient cardboard box underneath them Tatsuya can stand on to reach it.
: “Damn Hamya… but if everyone’s like this, there’s not much we can do.”
: Hanya’s nickname in the Japanese version of Persona 1 was “Hannya”, after the Japanese demon of the same name. If you’ve played Yakuza, you’ve probably seen one on Majima’s back. In the PSP re-release, it was changed to “Hamya” for reasons unknown.
: “Anyway, don’t we have a big clock to go break?”
: Chinyan is a Cantonese word meaning “Lover” or “Darling”.
: I’m honestly surprised that Ms. Saeko didn’t develop a Persona at some point. This would be the second time she’s been mind controlled in two games.
: So yeah, here’s the thing about Lisa: despite having American parents, Lisa does not speak English.
: We can also talk to our party members quick, but only Lisa and Yukino have dialog I want to go over because it has a new Cantonese expression.
: “Kaumena!” means “Help!”
: On the way out, we pick up another Fusion Spell, Kamaitaichi. This is done by using a water spell, an earth spell, and a wind spell in that order.
: We then level up and rank up Rhadamanthus, which allows us to get another fusion spell.
: Wind Slash EX is performed using I think a wind spell and I think any sword-type move in that order. Theoretically, we can now do a ton of single-target damage by using Blazing Burst and Wind Slash EX on the same turn.
: I should mention that there’s also Earth Slice EX and Flame Cut EX, which work exactly the same way as Wind Slash only with a fire or earth spell in place of a wind one. Basically, every single-target elemental spell probably has a fusion spell with a sword.
: This seems weird until you realize that “Hai!” is supposed to be Cantonese… even though it has the same meaning in Japanese, which is “Okay!” or “Yes!”
: We then need to talk to all of our party members. I really feel like Atlus didn’t quite understand pacing when they did this, because at this point we’re well over an hour into the game and most of that has been cutscenes and dialog.
: Oh, right. Now would be a good time to mention that there’s a sidequest I missed. There’s around 14 of them in Innocent Sin, and most of them are not worth doing. In this case, we could’ve gone back to the detective agency and had them spread a rumor about a toilet ghost, which we’d then fight as a mini-boss. There’s not much of a reward for it and the window to do it ends pretty much right here.
: Once we reach the stairs to the clock tower, Lisa lets us know we’re about to run into a boss fight. Thanks, Lisa.
: “Looks like Mr. Hanya’s not here, either. Let’s hurry and break the big clock so we can get outta here.”
: “U-U-Undie Boss! B-Behind! Behind you!”
: “…Huh?”
: “Ugh… Hamya!? Look, up there!”
: “Principal Hanya! So you were mixed up with Joker! The emblem curse and everyone acting weird is all because you teamed up with Joker, isn’t it!? Fess up!”
: “Foolish girl! How dare you? The emblem curse is a divine punishment brought on by the students’ poor conduct!”
: “You fools forget that you’re students and waste your lives worrying about dating and fashion!”
: If this sounds familiar at all, it’s because this is more or less the same spiel Morooka (the initial homeroom teacher) gives in Persona 4. Atlus recycled a lot of shit in Persona 4 from this game and just kind of hoped no one would notice.
: “You brought this curse on yourselves! Though I didn’t think the rumor Cuss High started would come true…”
: “So what did he give you!?”
: Hanya made a deal with the devil… to get his hair back. And also to live out his stupid fantasy from Snow Queen.
: “Joker! Weren’t you out for revenge on us!? What’s the point in granting a stupid geezer’s wish!?”
: “Revenge isn’t my only motive. This is between myself, the Giver, and you, the Thief… a battle with Tatsuya Suou for my dream!”
: “I’ll never let you destroy my dream again… I won’t make the same mistake twice!”
: The way I did this boss fight was not optimal because I am an idiot and listened to this dipshit guide author. He claims you can beat Hanya in three hits using Mega Blaze. He was probably playing on Easy.
: Hanya is weak to fire, but you want to use Blazing Burst instead, so that Maya, Eikichi and Lisa can use Kamaitaichi. It’ll do more damage that way. Persona 2 follows the idea that multi-target spells do less damage than single-target spells.
: This is Hanya’s Persona… which is a Hannya. This would make sense if the localizers hadn’t fucked it up in Persona 1!
: Hanya is mostly about single-target attacks: he has a weak physical attack with his wrench and his Persona has a couple of single-target attacks, one of which has a chance to freeze.
: Dark Young Legend is honestly his worst attack, and also his only multi-target attack. This fight would’ve gone way faster had I used the Blazing Burst/Kamaitaichi setup and not followed the guide.
: “Wh-What the!?”
: “Careful, everyone! It’s collapsing!”
: “Oww… is everyone okay?”
: “Hey! Wait, you bastard!”
: An… Innocent… Sin?
: If you’ll recall, this poem plays during the opening sequence.
: “That’s from a poem called ‘Der Doppelganger.’ Have you heard of it, Tatsuya-kun?”
: “Oh, no! I just thought there were some similarities. Ah, ignore me, Tatsuya-kun.”
: “Think positive, guys! You have to, at times like this. We’re not out of leads just yet. Let’s chase the rumors! They’ll surely lead us straight to Joker.”
: “Hey, that’s a great idea! Hamya did say that the emblem curse was started by some students from Cuss High.”
: “Whoa there! There’s no one at Kasugayama High whom the great Michel knows of that would start such a rumor. We’d be wasting our time checking it out. If we’re gonna search, let’s start somewhere else.”
: So, uh… this decision has a pretty big impact on a scene much later in the game. I selected “He’s Dead” here and then realized I forgot to save before I fought Hanya. I can always go back and replay the school dungeon, since I missed the sidequest as well.
: Therefore, I’ll let you vote. But before I do, I need to tell you what this question is really asking. The real question is “Do you want to see the Persona 1 party members one last time?”. If Hanya is dead, we get to see the P1 cast again. If he’s not, we get an alternate joke version of a scene where the P1 cast would be.
I’d prefer to see the P1 cast than the joke scene.
Let us see our good good friends from P1 again. Then just tell us what the joke scene is. Fuck Hanya.
Also I’ll be honest, my understanding of why the game is called Innocent Sin makes me really like it as a title, but we’ll talk about that later when it’s relevant and not Atlus trying very hard to foreshadow… something.
Hanya dies and we get to see the P1 cast? I fail to see how an Atlus joke scene could beat that.
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Your poll seems to be broken, but my vote is Hannya dies.
Click Here for Update 5
: It looks like the votes were overwhelmingly to kill Hanya off, so I’ll go with that. Interestingly, I found a translated interview with the Persona 1 devteam about where they got the inspiration for their characters. You can read it here.
: There’s a lot to take away from it. Pretty much the entire playable P1 cast is based off either idols or actors, with Hanya apparently being modeled after someone one of the developers knew. Maki was apparently based off a JAV star, which explains a lot about why she’s so godawful.
: The interview also kind of explains why the P1 characters look so different in P2: it’s because they were made to look more like the actors they were modeled after.
: There actually is a Peace Diner in Renegdai (where Seven Sisters is) but the one we’re looking for is in Yumezaki.
: I know I accidentally missed a sidequest, but there’s another one we can (but shouldn’t) do right now. If we talk to the lucky cat in the Kuzunoha Agency…
: It’ll ask us for 100 yen. Apologies for the different aspect ratio, I’ve been using my capture card to play Animal Crossing and forgot to switch the settings, it’ll be fixed momentarily.
: After talking to it 100 times (thus donating a total of 10,000 yen) the cat will give you an Incense Set, containing one of every stat-boosting incense. It’s probably not worth it, because there’s much better ways to spend money.
: You know what, speaking of Animal Crossing, let’s just turn this into an Animal Crossing LP. It sure is a wonderful day on the island. Roses in bloom everywhere because they won’t stop breeding, the works. Let’s go relax in my house after like 15 minutes of mashing X in front of that cat.
: I love my plant room. So relaxing. Wait a second… what’s that noise coming from the side room?
: GOD DAMMIT! Fucking cat! Fine, I’ll give you the bells, just fuck off!
: Now, where were we? Oh, right. Somebody spread a rumor that I know how to manipulate turnip RNG, and then my upstairs just kind of became like this overnight. I don’t really mind it, but… is that the goddamn cat again?
: One incense!? I gave you 100,000 bells! There aren’t even stats in Animal Crossing!
: You want 10 Nook tickets? That’s fucking highway robbery! Fuck it, can’t even relax in Animal Crossing, back to Persona 2.
: Yumezaki has a bunch of places we can’t visit yet. Peace Diner is in the Yumezaki Center mall. Remember malls?
: Maya also loves her some pachinko.
: Tony’s Shop, from the company that brought you Tony’s Arms 9mm ammo in Resident Evil 2. I hated that they got rid of that in the remake.
: Honestly, when this character first came in, before the dialog pop-up I thought it was Hanakouji having become thin again due to Eikichi spreading rumors. It would’ve been amusing.
: “Huh…? Oh yeah, you’re on Kozy’s newspaper staff… umm. Chikarin?”
: Meet Chikarin, our first rumormonger. She’s the other half of the rumor operation: you get rumors from her and can then have Todoroki spread them for a fee.
: “Perfect timing! Have you seen Kozy?”
: “Hey! Pay attention, Undie Boss! Sounds like it was Cuss High students who spread the rumor about that disease! Even Hanya said so!”
: “There’s no way my guys would stoop to that! I didn’t teach 'em to be cowards! Fatty must have gotten some bad info.”
: “That’s two witnesses now! Are you still gonna try and play dumb!?”
: “E-even if it was true, I bet it was just out of jealousy. If I go and yell at 'em, those rumors are gonna–”
: “Alright, that’s enough. We get the point. Let’s just go to Zodiac and learn the truth for ourselves. And if Cuss High students started the rumor, we’ll have Eikichi set them straight. Okay?”
: Anyway, here’s how rumormongers work. We can ask Chikarin about a couple of different things.
: The first two unlock new shops in certain areas. You can influence what items they carry and what their prices are like.
: The third category concerns the magazine sweepstakes and Mu, which is a casino. Unlike Persona 1, where the casino was basically random, there are ways to influence it in Innocent Sin. I’ve read you can also break the game with the magazine sweepstakes but it’s a pain in the ass to do.
: And the answer is no, I am not doing another casino grind. Not after Snow Queen. We can also talk to our party, which, uh…
: There’s also a neat little detail here. Peace Diner actually has a function in this game - you can eat food to get temporary buffs.
: I wonder how exactly you talk like a Victorian maid without speaking English? Unfortunately, the fan translation script doesn’t seem to have the lines for the minor NPCs, so I have no idea how the character talks in the Japanese version (it’s pretty clear the Victorian thing was something the localizers added in). I’m just gonna go with she sounds like Nanjo.
: One thing the fan translators claimed (and I’m not sure if this is true or not) is that Working Designs refused to translate Innocent Sin in the 90s because it was “too dark” for them. I can’t even imagine how bad this game would’ve been if Vic Ireland got his hands on it.
: Zodiac is another mall, but everything that isn’t the club in the back is closed.
: “Aiyah! Noriko’s here too!? Looks like she hasn’t given up on Anna Yoshizaka…”
: I have no idea who Anna is or why she’s even here. Something tells me she’s probably designed after a late-90s pop idol one of the developers was horny for. Just a guess.
: I missed a shot here, but it’s Anna asking Yukino who she is. This game is kind of annoying to take screenshots of, because the text scrolls real slow but trying to speed it up can sometimes outright skip short lines.
: This is what I like about Eikichi. He’s a visual kei punk who intimidates people.
: “S-Sugimoto!? You mean HIROKI Sugimoto!? HE’S the Leader at Cuss High…?”
: “Quit joking around!”
: This is the other thing I like about Eikichi, is that he actually beats the shit out of people. I absolutely hated Kanji in P4 (who is basically Eikichi if he was a badly written character) because of that. How many times did you ever see Kanji do anything other than stand around in a kind of impotent rage?
: “So there’s a new head honcho right under the old one’s nose…? Doesn’t that seem a little sudden? Sounds like the result of another rumor… maybe that Sugimoto’s in league with Joker too.”
: “It’s sure possible. There’s no way he could take over an entire school that quick without something up his sleeve.”
: “By the way, I’m sure you know the rumor about the Sevens emblem being cursed. From what I understand, that rumor started at Cuss High. Do you know anything about it?”
: “We’ll just have to ask him in person! Hey! Where’s Hiroki now?”
: “A secret lounge!? I’ll smack the smile off that cocky bastard’s face!”
: “Hold your horses there, Undie Boss!”
: “Hey, was there a girl called Kozy here? She was investigating the emblem curse rumor too.”
: “WHAT!? Did you just say Miyabi Hanakouji? Hanakouji-san went to see Hiroki!?”
: “I…I gotta go!”
: Just as you’d suspect, Eikichi will not be in our party for this dungeon. It’s fairly short anyway. We can talk to our party here.
: However, what we really want to do is talk to one of the people behind the counter.
: I don’t get how you work in a club and have never seen anything but the reception area, but whatever. This is a rumor we can pay Todoroki to spread - and in fact, I wound up resetting the game because I spent too much money on that cat.
: You have to spread this rumor before going to the second floor of Zodiac. It’s worth doing because while it roughly doubles the size of the second floor, it adds a bunch of items.
: Club Zodiac is basically the same as Seven Sisters: the same demons are here, with a few new additions, such as these Zombie Junkies. Unlike most demons, Zombies cannot be negotiated with - at least not to get cards from. Zombies are very flammable, so Mega Blaze will wipe entire encounters here.
: Persona 2 doesn’t take long to bring on the palette swaps. Blobs are higher-level slimes. Same weaknesses, same negotiation options.
: Finding the second floor is pretty straightforward.
: The second floor introduces the Zombie DJ, which die pretty much the second they touch fire.
: If we hadn’t spread the rumor, there’d be one chest here. Instead, there’s a series of chests containing cards for basic elemental spells: Garu, Magna, Zio, Aqua, Agi, Bufu, and then a Dia card. If you haven’t played an SMT game before, those are Wind, Earth, Lightning, Water, Fire, and Ice respectively (with Dia being a heal).
: If you’re following the “Spoiler-Free” guide on Gamefaqs, it’ll claim that you cannot negotiate with the Harpy. You can, you need Maya to do it.
: The second floor is also the first place we can meet Trish. If you’ll remember from Persona 1, Trish was a fairy who healed you in dungeons but cost probably two or three times what a doctor in one of the malls would charge.
: Trish wants a whopping 5,000 yen to heal us. For reference, she was barely charging that in the final dungeons of the SEBEC route in Persona 1 and the top floor of the Ice Palace in Snow Queen. This is absolutely not worth it when we have two Personas with Dia and Chewing Souls (an item that restores SP) are like 500 yen each.
: The second floor also has an optional staff room.
: The third floor is much smaller than the second one, and includes a couple of new enemies. Phantom is one of them, and I’m not sure I ever saw the other (it might be the Harpy).
: It’s funny because in 1999 this would’ve been seen as strange. The future sucks.
: The third floor also has damage floors, because I’m guessing someone forgot to lock the door to the planning room and Damage Floor Guy got in. Damage floors do way more damage than they did in P1.
: Apart from finding the mask we need to progress, there’s also a missable negotiation technique. To get it, we have to talk to Yukino before we leave the room.
: I’m honestly not sure if she’s talking about Jihei or Elly here, since as far as I remember both were capable of using katanas, though Elly preferred rapiers.
: This gets us access to several new negotiation techniques if we pair up Tatsuya and Yukino. I feel like this is something Damage Floor Guy did just to spite the people who never did any of the optional dialog in Persona 1.
: In a bizarre twist, Hiroki has a Persona but simply chooses not to use it. You’ll see in a bit.
: I don’t quite get how he knows this given that he’s from Cuss High, but whatever. I don’t think I knew a single person who went to one of the other high schools in town when I was there.
: I like how it changes her name back after he figures this out.
: This? This right here? This is why Eikichi is a better character than Kanji or Ryuji. Ryuji bleaches his hair while Eikichi beats the shit out of people.
: This is also why I did not like Persona 5’s writing as a whole.
: If you’ll remember, Persona 1 had a “moral choice” system that determined whether you got the “ultimate” Personas for each character. Guess what this is? The correct answer here is “Wait and see what happens.”
: On the PSP version, this choice matters a bit less because you can get the same reward from it through mutation, but it’s a lot harder to do.
: Eikichi then nearly gets stabbed. At least, I think it’s nearly.
: I don’t quite understand why Hiroki wouldn’t just use his Persona.
: “I’ve got no right to act all superior about what Hiroki did. There’s no difference between that and what I’ve done, not really. I acted like a big hero, ordering my guys not to pick on the weak… but that was all just a front.”
: “Really, it was just an excuse to beat people up with my Persona… and that ain’t how a man should act!”
: “Aiyah!? What happened to the usual, self-centered, heedless goon we all know? If nothing else, that stuff you said a second ago was… uh… i-it was pretty cool!”
: “Sorry for being so mopey… anyway, I’m done being Boss, starting now.”
: “Uhh, Hanakouji-san? Are you… well, I guess you’re not okay, huh…”
: “Okay, time to spill it all. If you don’t, you’re gonna find there’s way worse than having your pants pulled down.”
: “Why’d you order your stooges to spread a rumor that the Sevens emblem was cursed?”
: “That Yasuo… I turned him down, so he went with the next name on his list!”
: “The people here said something about a ‘gathering’ going on today. What did they mean by that?”
: Next time, we raid Cuss High, and hopefully the site doesn’t eat my update like it did this one. Twice.
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Snow Queen route: The end of adolescense can be scary, but you shouldn’t be afraid to move on with your life.
Persona 2: Punching people solves your problems!.
If I had to hazard a guess, she probably sounds like one of those demure ugu maido archetypes you see in anime.
Anna there, at least according to the wiki, is a tie-in novel protagonist. I’m sure she is otherwise unimportant.
I realize it’s a dance club but every time they said “Zodiac’s” my head is like, “please get these animes out of my apartment please”.
Eikichi’s reaction to learning that Kozy is Miyabi is a very, very good “oh, I should have been nicer to her. Time to shatter some fucking skull to save her” and that’s so refreshing.
The only thing I don’t like about it is knowing that if it had been “modern” Atlus doing it, they absolutely would’ve turned Miyabi into a joke like they did with Hanako in P4. For a company that was trying to make characters that felt more like real high schoolers, they sure did turn Persona into a giant pot of anime stereotypes as soon as EP was out.
It absolutely does. You’ll see. There is one scene I absolutely cannot wait to get to.
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Click Here for Update 6
: We’re on our way to Kasugayama High, also known as Cuss High.
: Cuss High is largely the same inside as Seven Sisters, with one exception that we’ll see a bit later.
: Right away, we encounter two new enemies: Empusa and Agathion. The guide says that you should be making pacts with the demons around here, and it was here I finally found out what pacts do.
: Unfortunately, the developers caught onto the whole “party member catchup” thing from Persona 1 and got rid of it. Eikichi is only level 6, which makes us basically unable to make a pact with anything.
: So anyway, here’s what making a pact does, apart from being a bad game mechanic. When you make a pact with a demon, it doubles the number of tarot cards the demon gives on a successful negotiation. It also causes the demon to give you Free Cards. Why is this important?
: The answer is that there are certain arcanas that demons do not drop cards for. To get Personas of those arcanas (Emperor is one) you need to use Free Cards. The sole exception are Fool Personas, which were a pain to get in P1 and are even more of a pain to get in P2.
: Apep here is one demon the guide recommends making a pact with for Strength cards. Unfortunately, we need Eikichi to do that.
: Even though Eikichi has told us where to go, we don’t want to go there just yet. Most of the rooms in Cuss High are blocked off, but 1-2 isn’t.
: This gets Tatsuya another pair negotiation technique with Eikichi. I think the cutoff point for this is actually a bit after where we are.
: This student gives us a hint about where we’re going next. It seems Cuss High has a bomb shelter built underneath it. I looked it up, and this actually wasn’t unheard of in the US: a bunch of schools had bomb shelters built underneath them in the 1960s, during the height of the Cold War.
: Interestingly, a lot of these bomb shelters were built by civilians and to no one’s surprise a lot of them were both poorly planned and probably not all that effective against a nuclear bomb. One article I saw had a piece about a school with a population of 1300 students in the 60s. The municipality wanted to make it a fallout shelter… that could hold a total of 340 people. How did they plan who’d get in and who wouldn’t? They uh… didn’t.
: Most of these shelters were meant to be decommissioned after the Cold War ended, but in a lot of cases that never happened and they were simply forgotten because there was no centralized recordkeeping system indicating where they all even were. There was even one under a high school in my home state of Connecticut, found in the early 90s.
: Japan apparently has the same problem, only theirs are even more of a problem. For one, they’re much older (dating back to World War II) and also tend to come with the problem of unexploded WWII-era bombs.
: If you walk by the rooms, you can see that some of them are decorated for the festival. Unfortunately, we can’t go into any of them.
: The encounter rate is absurdly high, and we run into Puck. Puck was in Club Zodiac, but I don’t think I ever saw him. The guide recommends making a pact with him to get Lovers cards, and I did but it broke before I could get anything out of it.
: You know what I’m not already tired of? Running around a building chasing after someone. Not like we’ve done this twice already.
: Now we get to go all the way back to the stairs and climb back up to the third floor.
: I’m pretty sure that by the time I got here, I had already put in more time than I did in Thanatos Tower in P1 because of how slow everything is.
: 2-4 is just down the stairs from 3-1, so it’s not much of a walk.
: Now we get to go all the way to the bomb shelter. I took a break and went to see what I could fuse at the Velvet Room. Unfortunately, everything there was either no good or would break the ability to use Mega Blaze. I could’ve replaced the Pixie we made with a Harpy, but there wasn’t much of a point.
: The stairs to the basement are right near the gym on the west side of the school.
: It’s kind of strange to me that the school has such a small basement. I know the one in Connecticut was only part of the basement and not the entire thing.
: “Forgive you? Forget that! There’s a whole laundry list of stuff we gotta ask you! There’s no way we’re just letting you go!”
: “You’re gonna tell us about the emblem curse whether you like it or not!”
: Welcome to the worst part of the game. This is where the guy who designed Thanatos Tower was like “You know what’d be even less fun than Thanatos Tower?”
: Tatsuya carries around a lighter at all times. The game never explicitly tells you this as far as I know, but this fact is very important.
: This radio is a goddamn plot hole. If you’ll recall, the student in 2-4 told us that the rumor is that once you enter the bomb shelter you can’t get out. How the hell did he get the radio in here?
: If this was the Persona 1 party, Reiji probably would’ve figured out they could’ve just spread a rumor that Yasuo is dead.
: “What did you just say?”
: Except it failed because no one is stronger than Bruce Springsteen.
: “Kehhei! Come out and face us!”
: Has that ever worked in anything ever?
: You’d think he’d ask for Chie, since she’s Lisa but Asian. Or for Ann, since she’s Lisa but devoid of any personality whatsoever. Seriously, Atlus has this unhealthy obsession with Lisa. She was even modelled in one of the PS2 games for some reason.
: “Raaaaaagh! That scumbag!”
: “Eikichi! What the hell!?”
: “Yeah, what she said, you moron! Why’d you go and break our only contact with the outside!?”
: For reference, Eikichi threw the radio at a wall and smashed it.
: “Whaaa…? B-But…!”
: “Oh, well. No use crying over it now. It’s at times like this that you gotta remember to think positive, guys! Together, we can find a way out!”
: Once we’re done talking, we can go through this door next to Lisa and enter what is undoubtedly the worst part of this game thus far.
: Not only is the entire bomb shelter a dark room, but it also has damage floors… AND you can’t pull out your map. There’s some hidden shit here but I had a run end because I touched a poison damage floor and had nothing left to cure it that I ran into while looking for said stuff. It’s not worth your time anyway - most of it is skill cards that are dropped by enemies around here.
: Just like in Zodiac, we have more zombie enemies. We can’t negotiate with them for cards, so all they’re good for is EXP.
: Anyway, the guides on Gamefaqs will tell you to hug the left wall. Do this. Eventually…
: You’ll find a secret passage that goes into a room with an item. I found three out of the four items in this dungeon and didn’t care to look for it because fuck this dungeon.
: Gee, this’d be useful… if I could make it to the Velvet Room. For those not familiar, Posumudi is the poison cure spell.
: Eventually, we find the “Small Room”. Now, here’s the part that’s a kick in the dick. This room has two doors: one on the West side (shown here) and one on the East side. It is possible to reach the East side door from the start of the maze. If you do, it’s locked.
: We then continue out of the door and continue following the left wall.
: Then we run into Robin Goodfellow. Robin Goodfellow is the cherry on top of the shit sundae that is this dungeon. He has a move (that he didn’t use on me and I suspect they made less frequent than the PS1 version) called Hula of Misfortune. In Persona 1, Hula of Misfortune was basically a free turn because it did nothing. In Persona 2, Hula of Misfortune STEALS HALF YOUR MONEY.
: Basically, this dungeon is two halves connected by the Small Room. What we’ve effectively done is a loop.
: I hope you like this dungeon, because you get to do THREE LAPS OF IT. I made the mistake of trying to follow the right wall for items. Do not do this.
: The right-hand side of the first room has a giant gauntlet of damage floors leading to a chest.
: Aques is… I think it’s the second-tier water spell in single target form. Eikichi’s persona already knew it by this point, as almost everyone had maxed their Persona out.
: Our last new demon here is Nisroc, who is remarkably easy to negotiate with. He’s immune to fire, so it’s worth doing.
: I was honestly about to just drop this game, and suddenly understood why one of the people who tried to LP this on Something Awful quit like a third of the way through. Persona 2 has some godawful design decisions.
: When we come back to the small room a fourth time (out of six) we get some dialog that’s actually important for once.
: Let’s make another lap and come back.
: On my last run, I happened onto this room. It’s kind of hidden in a corner on the second half of the lap. You can see the sparkles on the minimap indicating items.
: One’s a Dormina card, which is a sleep status spell. Kind of useless.
: The other is a fight with a Tengu. Tengu might be kind of a challenging fight… if it wasn’t for the fact that the party was almost level 12 at this point from the frequent random encounters. Have I mentioned I spent almost 90 minutes in just this part of the dungeon?
: When we get back to the Small Room, there’s a cutscene.
: “Hey, Lisa… do you have a mirror? Eikichi-kun mentioned a rumor that the one person who got out used a mirror, right?”
: “Ng Hai. I don’t have one with me now… I usually keep it in my bookbag.”
: Houshounah is a Cantonese word meaning “Sad” or “Pained”, but it’s not romanized correctly. Ng Hai is a “no no no” but not in the Nathan Drake sense.
: “My my, hey hey… three ladies here and none of them has a mirror!? Good thing I’m so beautiful…”
: If you’re wondering whether Eikichi pulls out a mirror, the answer is yes, because of course he does.
: Gotta love how laughably inept Lisa is. Or not.
: “Ai…yah… what now!? You better take responsibility for this, jackass!”
: “Me!? This is your fault! You better pay me back for it! That’ll be 1,000,000 yen!”
: “That’s enough! Thanks to you two, we just lost what might be our only hope of getting out of here!”
: Yukino deserves so much better than this. Remember Persona 1, when our party was generally competent?
: “Think positive, guys! This isn’t over until we decide it is. Let’s brainstorm! There has to be a way!”
: “Maya-san… we’re all exhausted. Let’s rest a while to cool down a bit. We’ll take turns keeping watch.”
: This is a horrible idea! Don’t you remember Hypnos Tower!?
: “I couldn’t sleep for some reason… mind if I sit here?”
: “You really think… we can get out of here…?”
: “Oh, sorry, sorry! Gotta think positive!”
: I’ve known people like this and I can’t stand any of them.
: “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile. You’ve got a great one!”
: “This guy’s my good luck charm. When times are hard, like now… I always ask him what to do.”
: “So many terrible things have happened… rumors are becoming reality, and we’re under attack from actual demons…”
: “But it hasn’t been all bad. I got to meet you and your friends…”
: “I’m having so much fun with you all. It’s like… being a kid again…”
: “I just can’t bring myself to believe that Joker really is a bad guy. It was like he was a child crying after having a nightmare…”
: “It’s like how you guys get into fights and try to act cool, but my Persona tells me you’re a bunch of good kids. I sense it the same way…”
: This quote is from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I really don’t know what it is with Atlus and European children’s literature.
: “True indeed… sometimes, I wonder if what we think of as real could just all be a dream.”
: “That I’m watching a dream go by while forgetting something important to me… Joker, too, maybe.”
: “Oh, sorry. Didn’t meant to get into such heavy stuff with you. Well, leave the lookout to me and get some rest.”
: “Goodnight, Tatsuya-kun. Sweet dreams…”
: I’d like to point out that when I started recording the bomb shelter segment, it was about 8:30 at night. By the time I reached this cutscene, it was well after 10. The bomb shelter took me longer than the final run of Thanatos Tower did.
: “Oh yeah!”
: “It’s okay. I mean, you’re practically me. And I’m you. It’ll be like I still have it!”
: I don’t know why he’s using the line most of the Personas use to introduce themselves, but whatever.
: It’s strange, though. We’ve seen Tatsuya as a high schooler, but who’s this other kid? He almost looks like a younger Yusuke out of Persona 5… even though Yusuke was supposed to be Goemon from Lupin III and not a Persona 2 reference.
: “Ahahahaha! You’re the greatest, Tatsuya! No matter what happens, we’re gonna keep our promise to each other! Forever and ever!”
: Hoi oi dik is a Cantonese phrase meaning “cute” or “lovely”.
: “We’ve all been too focused on the idea that there’s no exit. You know what they say: ‘what’s most important can’t be seen with one’s eyes.’ right Tatsuya-kun?”
: “Hm!? What’s going on with them…?”
: “There’s probably a loophole we’ve been overlooking. The key to cracking this rumor’s logic is the mirror. Now let’s sort through what we know one more time and think of a way out!”
: Maya is going to quiz us on the plot, and answering correctly will get us a new negotiation technique with Tatsuya and Maya, which is necessary to get a pact with at least one demon in this very dungeon. I’ve highlighted the correct answers, but seriously what is this, Dagger of Amon Ra? Can we somehow pin the blame for the bomb shelter on the Irish?
: If only Jihei had given Yukino the Spiegel mirror after Snow Queen.
: "Correct! No one knows where the exit is, so you can’t get out… but rumor has it that one person got out by using a mirror.’
: “Now here’s our problem, since we don’t have a mirror anymore… what do mirrors really do? They reflect things, right?”
: This is seriously feeling like something out of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, like the ten pages they spend in Part 3 trying to figure out the smashed clock.
: “Yes! That’s it! You’re not the only thing that appears in a mirror. Think about when you drive a car or ride your bike! Okay, and what do you mean by ‘everything in range’!? Keep going…”
: “Bingo! That’s right, Tatsuya-kun! That’s the importance of the mirror!”
: “I think whoever escaped in the rumor managed it by accident, but they did it by finding an exit reflected in the mirror!”
: “I get it… if the rumor is that no one knows where the exit is, then the exit does exist!”
: “Right! Not knowing isn’t the same thing as not existing… that was just us jumping to conclusions.”
: “Ahaha! I had my suspicions that would be the case right from the–”
: “But with no mirror, there’s no way for us to indirectly look for it! If we can’t see it, we still can’t get out!”
: Next time, we finish Cuss High and hopefully don’t run into any dungeons this bad for the rest of the game.
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If I recall it’s in your Important/Key Items menu, which is a cute detail.
Opened the door and threw it in. At no point did Yasuo go IN to the Bomb Shelter. That’s my guess anyway.
… I’ve played this game and I do NOT remember that scene with the emo hair kid exchanging items at all…
The good news I’m FAIRLY sure Cuss High Bomb Shelter is the worst dungeon in the game and thus it’s all up hill from here. The bad news is I’m fairly certain it’s around just after this point that I stopped playing myself to play other video games so I can’t be sure…
How the hell is a radio working in a bomb shelter?
Also, Maya and Yukino’s “These freaking kids, man…” faces are rapidly becoming my favorites.
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That is… certainly an interesting pile of words they wrote there. I can’t believe I read the words, “the devil is a wimp” outside of a shitpost or a different SMT walkthrough.
Oh no, that’s definitely not me. My twitter is http://twitter.com/TimrodDX. I know exactly which guide he’s talking about though - it’s the “spoiler-free” one that’s full of bad information. That guide is actually the reason I missed the Hanako sidequest at Seven Sisters, because he doesn’t mention you have to do it before you fight Hanya.
At least I know if the Christian fundamentalists hate it, I’m playing the right game.