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.
