Sin is In - Persona 2: Innocent Sin

Funny thing about that is that you can go the entire game without running into any of the P1 cast aside from Yukino and Elly, especially if you say that Hanya lived. You basically have to actively seek out Maki and Brown. Just like in his own game, Reiji requires a whole bunch of steps to see again. Eternal Punishment is a bit different.

One other thing I wanted to mention, even though it’s an incredible longshot. Atlus was confirmed as an attendee at the PC Gaming Show thing they’re doing in lieu of E3 this year. My hope is that they announce they’re porting their entire back catalog to PC, including Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. They won’t.

Fair point on the Marin Karin stuff. It becomes pretty useless for the player, yeah.

I highly recommend Persona 3 Portable by the way. It lets you control everyone, and lets you be a girl. And the girl even has a personality to her dialogue choices!

Click Here for Update 11

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The following takes place between the hours of around 9:30 at night to just before 11:00. Our story begins in the Abandoned Factory, with me spending almost two hours trying to hunt down a rare boss spawn and not finding it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Now that we’ve cleared Aoba Park, a new area opens up in the factory, aptly named “Factory”. This area contains enemies going from Mu to the Concert Hall… as well as an EXTREMELY rare boss spawn that I did not find after two hours of trying. The boss is the Buddha, and you can kill him to be able to summon him. Buddha’s not great, except that he has one of the only spells that does actual Light damage (as opposed to instakills) in the game.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is the Persona version of Sakya, aka Siddhartha Gautama, aka Buddha. Why Buddha is only level 29 despite the fact that the head deities of major religions are usually the end-game demons/Personas in the SMT series, I have no idea.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I stopped because the party was pushing level 25, and I didn’t want to get too overpowered. There IS a way to guarantee a Sakya spawn, and that’s by using Estoma, a spell that prevents encounters with enemies lower level than your party is. Unfortunately, getting Estoma would require me to mutate a Harpy or Pixie and fuck that noise.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What we need to go in there for (apart from money, because buying new equipment was well over double the cash I had on hand at the end of Aoba Park) is this note.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Speaking of which, we can open two new shops in Kounan: Jolly Roger and London Clothiers. The “Good but Expensive” rumors come from the Sumaru Genie and Chikarin, respectively.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The owner of the Jolly Roger, by the way, is a fucking zombie pirate. He’s like this even if you don’t spread the rumor about the weapons shop. Our next destination is Double Slash in Aoba, to meet with…

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Elly! The model of an angel! The best girl from Persona 1, who uh… god that redone artwork kinda makes her look like a gremlin. The reason the character designer did this, by the way, is because the idol they modelled Elly after did it in real life.

Happy: “Sorry to drag you out here when you’ve got work to do, Eriko. These are the guys I told you about over the phone. My partner Maya, Lisa, Eikichi,and Tatsuya.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’ll be using the Eternal Punishment portraits for Elly for the rest of the LP. She only has one in Innocent Sin.

Elly: “It’s nice to meet you all. My name is Eriko Kirishima.”

Normal: “Sorry to cut right to the point, Eriko, but that stuff I told you about…”

Elly: “Sure. I was thinking it over on my way here.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What we’re about to see is that entire stupid “square the circle” puzzle from Gabriel Knight 3 done right.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I dunno, I think we’d better go through a 10-minute sequence of scanning shit into SIDNEY first.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I realized just now that I was probably supposed to read the riddle in the inventory.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Are we going to get a revelation that Maya is actually a CIA agent? Or that Eikichi is secretly vampire Jesus?

Normal: “That’s amazing, Eriko! But Hirasaka is a pretty huge place… we still need to pinpoint a location.”

Normal: “All descend with smiles to the netherworld… I get it. The descent into the netherworld is about Yomotsu Hirasaka from Japanese myth… it’s a play on words.”

Elly: “Spoken like a trained journalist! There’s no doubt that the third line is a riddle as to the exact location in Hirasaka. Unfortunately, I’m not that familiar with Sumaru City’s environs. So I can’t deduce anything further as yet…”

Happy: “That’s okay! You’ve done more than your share! We’ll figure out the rest on our own. Grazie, Eriko-san!”

Elly: “You’re quite welcome. I’ll stay here and ponder the Masked Circle and their riddle a little more.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: At this point, I went to go see if I could find Sakya in the factory, and uh… yeah I didn’t. I did however find a couple of new fusion spells.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Atomic Destruction is an instant kill spell that requires three people to perform. I think the idea is it works on enemies that would otherwise be immune to Hama or Mudo, but it’s really not worth doing.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Low End Breaker is a spell that requires Zanma, which requires levelling Nekomata to Max Rank. It targets the lowest level enemy and attempts to instakill them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: After spending well over 200,000 yen on armor I didn’t really need, it’s time to go figure out what the riddle means. Even though we haven’t read it, there’s one key line to it, that being “All descend with smiles to the netherworld.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here’s a list of everywhere in Hirasaka. Hmm… all descend with smiles… clearly, they must mean the Sakanoue Building!

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Eikichi is going to waterboard someone before the day is through.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yeah, of course. I’m sure “Sakanoue” is Japanese for Smile or something. It’s probably just poorly translated.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Uh… all hail Shadow?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Anyway, the trick to the next two dungeons is that they’re optional. The game becomes a bit harder if you skip them because there’s more of a level jump going into the next mandatory dungeon, but really you’re not missing much if you let them blow up.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’ll do the rest of the alternate dialogue here, but I’m going to purposely leave out the names of the next two possible bomb sites. NEXT TIME, ON TWENTY-FOUR:

Elly: “It’s most likely north-northeast from Sevens. The only things there are ________ and _______ in _________. So the next target is–”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What’s that, Elly? You’re kinda breaking up.

Sad: “Elly-san, please! Can you be more specific about the location? Which one is King Leo’s next target?”

Elly: “Then… you… you couldn’t prevent the fire… I-I’m sorry… there’s not much more I can tell you…”

Normal: “Thanks, Eriko. That’s more than enough to get us started. Contact us again if you figure out anything else.”

Angry: “Look alive, people! This is not the time for moping! We have to get a grip if we want to stop any more deaths! Hang in there! Dig deep! The next target is either __________ or _____________ in ___________!”

Angry: “We HAVE to do this, or there’s no stopping the next bombing! Tatsuya, don’t steer us wrong this time!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If Smile Hirasaka explodes, you get this on the world map for the rest of the game. Meanwhile, in the real timeline…

Normal: “We need to evacuate the customers before we can go looking for the transmitter. Can I borrow your lighter, Tatsuya-kun?”

Happy: “A roommate? Ooh… do you have a Chinyan?”

Happy: “Sorry to disappoint, but my roommate’s a girl.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Her roommate is a woman by the name of Ulala Serizawa, who is a party member in Eternal Punishment.

Happy: “Ever since I started at Coolest, I’ve been too busy for a boyfriend. I’m pretty much married to my job!”

Happy: “I don’t think of it as a limitation. It’s been my dream since I was little to be a journalist, so my life’s pretty fulfilling. I live for my work! Right, Yukki?”

Happy: “For work, huh…? I don’t really know what most people live for, I guess. But at the very least, I like to think I’m living to make my dreams come true.”

Smug: “It’s strange… when I’m with Maya-san, I’m reminded of the “Big Sis” I see in my dreams…”

Surprised: “Eikichi, those dreams–”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Maya somehow finally sets the smoke alarm off. It’s strange that she’d even need a cigarette for that - most smoke detectors would probably go off from the lighter.

Smug: “Pardon them for my sake, sweets. C’mon… can’t you forgive and forget at the request of such a beautiful specimen?”

Confused: “P-Pervert?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We are now alone as Tatsuya. This is not a situation we want to be in for any length of time for a bunch of different reasons.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Almost immediately, we run into Pairika, who we could fuse as a Persona but I didn’t, mostly because it’s really hard to keep fusion combos up. We’re able to buy her off by promising her some special yaoi book.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The enemies here give insane amounts of cards - we’ve still got well over 500 free cards, and I think the lowest-level enemies give 20.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s a lot of doors up here, but all of them are closed. Kind of makes you wonder how Smile Hirasaka is even in business.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Around the time I got here, I quit for the night. The next time I loaded the game, I decided I wanted to try something… which paid off massively. What I did was fuse Gullinbursti.

New Persona: Gullinbursti

Origin: Norway

First Appearance: Majin Tensei II (SNES)

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What I wasn’t sure of was if Gullinbursti’s first skill, Rockfall, counted for the purpose of fusion spells. It absolutely does, and it winds up saving my ass from a prolonged shitfest of a boss fight. Also seriously, what is it with the Norse and magic talking farm animals?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Lich (who we fought in a box at Giga Macho) and Gandharva show up here as regular encounters. The problem is that they’re very common when you’re alone as Tatsuya but become pretty rare after that.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I spent some time dicking around on the 4th floor. There’s items in the building, but you can mostly wait until you have your full party to hunt them down. I did it solo as Tatsuya because I could.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The 4th floor has the Pipe Fox and an incense. The Pipe Fox is actually kind of useful in that it does less physical damage than Maya’s current gun but increases her magic attack and magic defense by 10 each.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s an elevator prominently placed in the center of the map that goes to all but the 3rd floor. Unfortunately, we need to go there to get Maya back.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The 3rd floor is basically one gigantic string of hallways, with Maya on the far side from the stairs. What I didn’t know is that there’s actually two sets of stairs here. I’ll explain how I found that out in a bit.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here’s what I missed. There’s a box here with 30,000 yen in it, which I absolutely want because I just spent all our money on equipment. Right next to it is the second staircase, which I completely miss.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I wander around the 2nd floor for a while, and Tatsuya nearly levels up. I was looking for a couple of item boxes, but couldn’t find them. Then I decided to check and see if any maps existed.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If you read the Persona 1 LP, you’ll know how much I love this Japanese site that did maps for all of the old Shin Megami Tensei games as well as Persona 1 and the Persona 2 duology. You can find the site here.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I figured I could just take the elevator back to the 3rd floor and decided to grab the items that the map said were in here. This was before I knew the elevator does not go to the 3rd floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400:There’s another new enemy here - the Kraken. You can fight one in a box, but I’m not sure why because it’s a regular encounter.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is also where I discover that there’s a wall between this part of B1F and where Yukino is on the other side.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here’s the staircase I missed. You can see how - it doesn’t look like a staircase and it’s just far enough from the chest with the 30,000 yen in it that you wouldn’t see it on the map from there.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I stopped on the second floor’s back side to get a Maragi card, because why not.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The other side of B1F is a box maze, albeit a very simple one.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: No, Tatsuya can’t simply walk between the boxes, you have to go all the way around.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: As soon as you get Yukino back, the encounters change from one enemy at a time to a bunch of Aoba Park enemies at once. Not pictured: me running all the way back to the 3rd floor so I could switch from the back staircase to the main one so I could go back down to the 1st floor so I could find Lisa. I pretty much did this dungeon in the most back-asswards way possible.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Not pictured: me backtracking all the way from the 1st floor back to where we started outside the women’s bathroom on the 4th floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Little transphobic there, lady?

Normal: “What’s the matter, Tatsuya? Huh? That sound…”

Angry: “How much time do we have!?”

Surprised: “Um… F-Five minutes!?”

Angry: “How did you not notice this!?”

Confused: “H-H-How was I supposed to know!?”

Surprised: “E-Excuse me! That transmitter in your pail… where did you find it!?”

Surprised: "That’s not a clock! It’s a timed detonator for a bomb! You need to give that to us right away!’

image

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I am absolutely never going to get tired of doing that, and the best part is I still have one more dungeon to do it in.

Surprised: “This is an emergency, so we have no choice. We’ll have to resort to force!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Like Mara, Belphegor is kind of a joke demon that for some reason is associated with toilets. This is the only game in which he gets to be a boss. By Persona 5, he’s demoted to trash demon in the first dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Somehow, he summons a bunch of masked circle troops who never actually show up in the upcoming boss fight.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Ixquic is a 13-year-old girl, which is kind of funny because that makes her slightly older than I am.

Ixquic: “Heyyy, everyone! The evil demon tamers are here, just like the great King Leo’s oracle said they’d be!”

Ixquic: “You fiendish demon tamers who seek to destroy the world! You… uh… umm… hm? Hold on a sec.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Fun note about this fight. Belphegor is not Ixquic’s Persona. He is a random ass SMT demon, which actually makes HER the demon tamer.

Ixquic: “Hey, um, Belphie? What does this say?”

Ixquic: “The magical warrior Ixquic, reincarnated since time immemorial, will whoop your ass with divine retribution! Demon tamers, be banished to the darkness from whence you came!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I love how the party just totally ignores her. The Leo Mask guys are cannon fodder at this point.

Ixquic: “YO! DEMON TAMERS! Don’t turn your back on a reincarnated warrior of the Masked Circle!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In 1999, the idea of a Mayan warrior getting reincarnated as a 13 year old Japanese girl would be a joke. In 2020, it’d be the next big isekai anime once they run out of ideas for all the other isekai anime.

Normal: "Be a good girl and don’t get in our way, m’kay, sweetie? You should hurry out of here too!’

Ixquic: “Did you hear that, Belphie!? This old hag is treating a magical warrior like a plain ol’ little girl!”

Hurt: “O-old hag…!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I like the idea of Eikichi going full on Jack Bauer and waterboarding the detonator until it talks. That’s my canon for how they disable it.

Normal: “Stop that right now! If this building goes, you’ll die along with it!”

Ixquic: “Psh, I don’t care. My family and classes are all just a pain… there’s nothing good about being alive!”

Ixquic: “The reincarnated warrior Ixquic lives for justice, and she’ll die for it too! Only that will satisfy me!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You might not be able to tell, but Maya just slapped her.

Normal: “Don’t… don’t you EVER treat death like a joke! You have the power to change your own environment! Your own future! Shrugging that off and saying you’d rather die just shows how immature you are!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I feel like that one guide author who went hardcore Christian fundamentalist kind of missed this entire exchange when he said the game promoted death and suicide. Anyway, this next part is kinda wild if you think about it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So you might think “Oh, Ixquic’s a zoomer”… only this is taking place in 1999. Maya (born 1976) and Yukino (1979) are both firmly Generation X. Tatsuya (1981) and Eikichi and Lisa (both 1982) are both borderline depending on whether your cutoff date for Gen X is.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Ixquic is a millennial. Atlus was making boomer jokes about millennials YEARS before anyone came up with that term. Incidentally, Ixquic is a few years older than I am (she’d be 33 or 34 today).

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It was this fight where I was very, very glad I fused Gullinbursti. You’ll notice we have a couple of new fusion spells available.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: One of them (which I did capture later on) is Craggy Fang, which is the Earth equivalent of Mega Blaze. Belphegor is very weak to Earth (something the wiki gets wrong) and so we have our primary tool to use against him.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Ixquic’s Persona is Reverse Pairika, and she spends most of her turns casting Magarula on the party for 20-30 damage each time.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Incidentally, and I kind of forgot to mention this up to now, most of the enemies in this game have had their stats cut from what they were in the PS1 version. Belphegor and Ixquic were among the most heavily nerfed, having their magic stats cut in half and then some.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh right, here’s Craggy Fang in action.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here’s my auto setup for this fight. You’ll notice that Yukino and Eikichi have been hit much harder than everyone else. This is because at this point, Belphegor was mostly using his single-target physical attack (which hits for about 30 damage) as opposed to using Magryva (second-tier gravity spell) which hits the entire party.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I did have to stop to heal at one point, because Belphegor decided to start using Magryva and nearly killed Maya off. One interesting touch is that like your characters, Ixquic has a different idle animation when she’s low on HP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We were already a bit overlevelled coming into Smile Hirasaka, and now we’re even moreso. The enemy levels don’t change a whole lot in the next dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Maya somehow casts a healing spell, which is funny because the only person in the party with a heal spell right now is Eikichi.

Sigh: “Is it okay to let this chica be? She didn’t seem very sorry… I wouldn’t be surprised if she came back to harass us again.”

Normal: “She must never have had any proper adults play with her… Don’t worry! If that ever happens, I take full responsibility.”

Elly: “Hmm… the first line is the same as before, so the only question is the rest of it. Going by the same logic as before, the sign of water that presides over death and rebirth…”

Elly: “That would be Scorpio. In other words, head north by northeast from Seven Sisters High, so the next target is Yumezaki!”

Happy: “Good job, Eriko! We can take it from here now that we have an idea where to go.”

Normal: “The way to El Dorado opens from dream’s cape… El Dorado, huh? It translates to “golden one”… is there anywhere in Yumezaki with a name like that?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next time on 24:

https://youtu.be/HqsSvgC1uhA?t=6

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Hahahahahaha am I the only one who saw Lich’s sprite at first and thought it was a dude in a kayak? Imagine you’re fighting demons trying to defuse this bomb in a building and you see some guy in a kayak sliding down the hall at you.

Because Buddha isn’t the head deity of Buddhism. He’s definitely an important teacher and religious figure, and shouldn’t be such an early game Persona, but he’s not the god of of Buddhism. That’d be Brahma, the Self-born, Svayambhu. They’re the creator god of the various ancient historical Vedic religions, of which Buddhism is one of. It’s called Buddhism because the Buddha was the guy who though about and taught it.

When the winter months roll around the only thing you have to do is drink, eat, and look at animals, you start to believe Snorri when he tells you the boar he was chasing down called him a flaccid dick head- if only because it’s something to laugh about with your friends.

My best guess on this one is that due to originally being an Israelite god of orgies and stuff like that, Christian depictions included the toilet as a way of presenting him as gross and unclean. They also consider him the demon of sloth, and… I guess sitting on the can having a think about inventions is slothful? Look demonology is weird.

I… I can’t tell if you’re being truthful the internet makes tone impossible. God, I feel old now… either that or very stupid.

Click Here for Update 12

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Previously, on 24, we blew up Smile Hirasaka and then Jack Bauer waterboarded time itself to send him back in time to save it. Just as Elly said, our next destination is Yumezaki… for a sidequest.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Fuyuko would be the person you’d get the quest for Hanako from back at the start of the game… if we hadn’t accidentally skipped it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh god I’m scared already. If hours upon hours of anime are right, Kansai is like the New Jersey of Japan.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: To get the rumor for the sidequest, we need to pick “Not at all”. I mean, I dunno, New Jersey is pretty scary.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Naturally, we have to go to Todoroki and pay for the rumor. The reward isn’t worth it by any stretch of the imagination, but the EXP and money from fighting the Cursed Taxi definitely is.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Back in the Abandoned Factory, a new room opens up. This one actually connects to the room we were in before, the one with Sakya in it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s some uninteresting garbage near where the note in the previous room was.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It doesn’t take long for us to run into the Cursed Taxi, which I kill with Atomic Destruction in one turn.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This puts Eikichi and Yukino at level 25. We are definitely a bit overlevelled now.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Before we leave, there’s a note right outside the room where that Open Door Card was.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You know your town has issues when there are two different demon taxis running around. The reward for the next part of this quest is definitely not worth it - it’s a card that teaches Recarmdra, a spell that kills the user to revive someone else.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We then need to go back to Todoroki a second time.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Same taxi, different hat. Dies in one turn to Atomic Destruction.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: With everyone at 25 or 26 (except Lisa) I decided it was a good time to update the Persona roster.

New Persona: Juanlian Dajiang

Origin: China (Journey to the West)

Persona 2 Original

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Juanlian Dajiang is a character from Journey to the West, who is usually portrayed as a kappa in the Japanese editions. His story’s emblematic of how everyone in Ancient China was an asshole: he gets exiled from heaven for accidentally breaking a vase and cursed to be a sand monster who gets speared by swords every day.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Journey to the West is fucking wild, by the way. Pretty much everyone in that novel has some kind of divine or otherwise magic powers, so it’s no wonder that Dragon Ball was based off it. I still much prefer The Water Margin… apart from the ending.

New Persona: Agrippa

Origin: Germany (A real person)

Persona 2 Original

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Agrippa is a very unique Persona for a whole lot of reasons. First, he’s an actual person. and was both an alchemist and a feminist. Second, he has Summon Spirits, which is used in a whole bunch of very specific fusion spells. He also gets Zanma fairly early on which makes him a suitable replacement for Nekomata.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Now that we’ve got some new Personas, let’s see if we can’t figure out where the next bomb is. This time, I read the riddle.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I had an A+ in Spanish in high school and it’s because I know that “El Dorado” is Spanish for “Pachinko”.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here’s a horrifying thought: what if she and Eikichi had a kid? What would their hair look like?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Okay, clearly Ulala won the jackpot and found the bomb that was totally inside Pachinko Silver. We’re fine. Absolutely nothing bad’s going to-

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You know, this is why I only took the bare minimum of Spanish.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So no, the next destination is GOLD. I wish the gym I went to was that big. Maybe then they wouldn’t have to pack the machines in and I could hide from that creepy old lady who practically lives there. I’m not going to post the rest of the scene because it would be difficult to blank out and immediately reveals the next dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This time, I mutated Fjalar into Shou Shen for Tatsuya. I’m not doing a Personalog for him because Shou Shen is just Fukurokuju by a different name - sort of like how there’s six different variations of Apsaras in P1.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Anyway, let’s go to our real destination this update: GOLD, which is an obvious reference to the Gold’s Gym chain.

Normal: “Kinda, yeah. We’re pretty lucky Maya-san’s roommate has a membership.”

Normal: “Looks like Ulala’s here. I should stop by the boxing ring and tell her to evacuate.”

Normal: “Uh, about that…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Not yet… wait for it…

Surprised: “I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but it’s true! There’s no time! Hurry and get out of the gym!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Ulala punches the bag so hard that the sand falls out of the bottom.

image

Surprised: “Aiyah! Isn’t that a detonator!?”

Surprised: “Like I said, there’s no time! All I can say for sure is that this organization called the Masked Circle set them!”

Surprised: “…There she goes. I hope she remembers to get out of the gym.”

Normal: “Anyway, now that we know this is the next target, we don’t have a second to lose. Let’s find that transmitter!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We also have some optional party dialogue

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I don’t know too much about Chinese martial arts, but I know that Jeet Kune Do is the style Bruce Lee practiced. I’m pretty sure it’s not as mainstream as Lisa makes it appear.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: GOLD is actually a very short dungeon - the developers made it with the intent that you’d get stuck trying to find your way around to pad out the length, but if you know where you’re going it’s pretty short. Our first stop is in this hallway directly north of the boxing gym.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Tatsuya pushes Maya out of the way of the falling bar just in time.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s kind of ridiculous how much explosive material the Masked Circle apparently has access to.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Unlike Mu or Giga Macho, which had items everywhere to try and coax you into not just speedrunning them, GOLD only has two items. One of them is in the men’s dressing room, which is on the other side of the hallway from the storage closet. Weirdly, you don’t use the door to get in… you just walk around the wall.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Most of the demons here are repeats, but I had a bit of a time with the first few fights. This is because upgrading all the Personas at once kind of broke most of the fusion spells.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: No Mega Blaze, no Maxi Tempest, no Craggy Fang, and no Sonic Wave.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Fortunately, we can use the combination of Eikichi, Lisa, and Yukino to perform Bane Splash. Bane Splash is water -> earth -> water, the inverse of Craggy Fang. I never got an actual shot of it but meh.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This particular encounter is very common and also very annoying. Kraken is weak to fire but either reflects or absorbs water, I forget which. Gandharva absorbs fire and is weak to water. Without Maxi Tempest or Sonic Wave, this is quite annoying.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Inside the men’s dressing room is an Agility Incense. I really should start using these.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The women’s dressing room next door has 50,000 yen in exactly the same spot as the men’s dressing room. This is the final treasure in GOLD.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: One demon that I somehow didn’t encounter in Smile Hirasaka is Hel, who just kinda exists.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Onto the second floor, where I immediately get into an encounter.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Kabhandha was a box demon in Aoba Park. On the right is Rasputin again, and on the left is Pyro Jack. Pyro Jack has a rumor skill the same way that Jack Frost did, which is called Dynamic Agilao. We don’t really have a reason to fuse Pyro Jack at this point so I didn’t bother getting the skill.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Our next destination is another closet on the second floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Eikichi gets hit with a chest fly machine because he’s the joke character.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is what, the fourth or fifth time we’ve seen Eikichi on the floor like this?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We actually want to talk to Lisa.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Doing so causes her to get knocked onto the ground as a locker explodes in front of her.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By the way, the demons here give INSANE amounts of cards if you negotiate with them. We have almost 700 free cards and that’s after doing all those fusions.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next stop, the third floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: One more bomb rejected. I have to ask though, if the bombs in all the other rooms were on timers… why did they need a transmitter?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Suddenly, a strange person walks in and then leaves after he spots the party.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We now need to go all the way back down to the first floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Pretty much all the demon encounters get replaced by Masked Circle troops. This is REALLY annoying without Maxi Tempest, because the blue cultists reflect water and the red ones reflect fire, so I can’t just Mega Blaze/Bane Splash them to death.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The guide says to grind to 28, but that’s because the guide is trying to have you learn all the fusion spells. There’s no reason to do that. Trophies didn’t even exist on the PSP when this game released. The fusion spell in question requires you to have four Personas who needed special items to fuse in Persona 1 and were also useless - those being Suzaku, Genbu, Byakko, and… whatever the fourth one is, I forget.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m not doing that for several reasons, the biggest being that Agrippa is going to learn Maragion soon and that’ll get us access to what’s basically a better Mega Blaze.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I grinded to level 27, mostly because the encounters here give a lot of money rather than because I wanted more EXP. This is how you’re supposed to afford the new equipment at the stores in Kounan rather than grinding the abandoned factory.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meet Ulala’s ex-boyfriend, Youichi Makimura. He’s based off a Japanese actor who scammed a bunch of money off his girlfriend to start an (ultimately failed) business venture and then had an affair with another woman. The actor in question, Kenji Haga, was arrested in 2007 over a blackmail scheme involving the Yakuza.

Normal: “How considerate of you. If you behave yourself and answer our questions, this should be a short chat.”

Surprised: “Ulala! You’re still here!?”

Surprised: “I had no idea Ulala was a Persona-user!”

Sigh: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scored… who knows what girls a beautiful man like me has wrought tears from…? We should both be careful, Tatsuya.”

Normal: “So then, Tatsuya. What kind of riddle did we get this time?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh man, I totally know the answer to this one.

Surprised: “It’s not a riddle! The next target is written here plain as day!”

Normal: “I don’t like this at all… we’re dealing with King Leo here. Couldn’t it be another trap?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next time, we get to see what happens when Innocent Sin takes on Thanatos Tower from Persona 1.

1 Like

What I meant is that Ixquic is 13 in 1999, which makes her birth year either 1986 or 1987. This makes her older than I am.

Okay, that makes a little more sense. Brahma is in this game as an end-game Persona (he’s level 67 and has not one but two unique fusion spells) but yeah it seemed really weird that Buddha is in the same bin as like, the Greek goddess of rainbows and the kappa from Journey to the West.

Dude looks like the speedbump at the end of a Yakuza substory, so that checks out.

Also thanks for making me laugh at my own joke again by reminding me of those clickbait “COULD BRUCE LEE WIN AN ACTUAL FIGHT” headlines. My answer was “Well he’s dead so probably not.”

Aah, right. Yeah if you want demon information I’m your girl, but otherwise I’m dumb as a brick.

That’s honestly a good question. Maybe it’s partly because Buddha himself never really considered himself that special, or the specific incarnation of Buddha you can summon from the sea of souls is just like, the man before he reached Nirvana.

As for the main stream nature of Jeet Kune Do… I mean given Bruce Lee was always a hard line “style is all well and good but in an actual fight just bite them if you need to” person, I’m not sure. The man himself presented it as less of a style and more of a philosophy; if you fight, do anything as long as it works. Don’t rely on stiff form and structure because that’s just not how fights work, really.

So in a sense it’s KINDA main stream in so far as, if you’re a street fighter who practiced sweeping some specific moves because you know they’re actually good in a fight, but otherwise are just a brawler who reacts to stuff, you are practicing Jeet Kun Do. Likewise if you’re a full on professional martial artist who just like, slams a dude in the nuts out of nowhere because that’ll take em out.

It’s obviously more complicated than that, but the spirit of it holds true. As for it’s connection to mixed martial arts… I mean, I guess? Mixed Martial Arts fights I’ve seen tend to just be “you brutalize each other as efficiently as possible, and maybe also wiggle on the ground for a long enough time that Zodi gets concerned she’s on the wrong channel” so like, I guess they’ve got the spirit of Jeet Kun Do too.

I have (or had) an online acquaintance who strongly recommended Persona 2 to me. I never got around to trying it because, of course, Atlus was too cool to release the Eternal Punishment remake outside Japan. Reading the LP, the game does seem interesting, but I’m not really interested in playing it. I don’t think either SMT or Persona are for me, for entirely different reasons.

Hypocritically, now I’m in the mood to try P3P again…

The SMT series and the Persona sub series nested within it are… extremely hard sells. Mechanically, at best they’re this weird sweet spot of “difficult enough to make you mad, but not enough to make you feel bad when you do finally beat it”, and at worst it’s just fucking rude. Writing wise they’re also… strange beasts, even the more simpler ones. Persona errs on the simple side.

I do think even if you don’t enjoy playing them, they can easily be enjoyed watched. There’s a lot of spectacle to it, I think?

And to be fair, Persona 3 Portable is actually pretty good.

Click here for Update 13

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Just as a heads up, the first part of this update had to be re-recorded, so I’m starting it… a good deal in and then kinda working backwards. Just in case anything sounds weird. I also miss a Luck Incense on the third floor but don’t care enough to go back for it.

Normal: “We need to evacuate the children before we can start looking for the transmitter. Let’s tell the teacher and get her cooperation.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I honestly thought this was Ixquic again, but it’s not.

Normal: “Tadashi? Tamaki!? What’re you two doing up there?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh look, it’s the developer self-insert being horny for idols again. Sometimes, I wonder if the devteam had some kind of pool going where they’d see how many days they could go without Satomi Tadashi lusting for idols.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Clearly, Tamaki lost not only her COMP and level-ups after SMT If, she also lost her dignity.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You can hear Tadashi’s leg go “crunch” when he jumps down.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What is it with people and accusing the party of working for Hitler? Hitler’s been dead for the better part of 50 years at this point.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I don’t even get why she brought Tadashi with her, other than because Satomi Tadashi was presumably hiding the script from the other writers. Let me remind you that unlike Tamaki, Tadashi is not a Devil Summoner. He doesn’t have a COMP or a GUMP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Suddenly, King Leo.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Leo starts by lighting the exit door on fire. You’d think given that we have two water-based Personas it’d be easy to put that out, or that there’d be a fire extinguisher or sprinkler system in this museum.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Maya immediately goes into oh no help me daddy mode. We’ll see why it is she’s so afraid of fire in just a bit.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is actually incorrect. There’s a time limit on this dungeon, but it’s a single time limit.

Leo: “Witch… you will not escape me this time! Everything is destined to perish regardless. You and these brats will be an early sacrifice!”

Leo: “Heheh… heehee…hyahaha! Hyaaaaahahahaahhaha!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Maya tries to get over her fear by becoming an anime protagonist. I immediately heard Terra’s Dissidia 012 incarnation when I read this line the first time. It’s really too bad that the PS4 Dissidia game was trash.

Normal: “Listen, everyone! We need to get all the children to the roof!”

Normal: “I remember this place being made up of four pretty big floors… you two, find the teacher and head to the rooftop!”

Normal: “Our job will be to check each floor’s exhibition rooms and make sure there are no kids who haven’t evacuated yet.”

Angry: “Let’s get this done, guys! We need to search everywhere for them!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The game puts us right into the dungeon, with a 10 minute time limit. This is all the time we have to search all four floors and get to the boss fight.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: While this sounds worse than Snow Queen in Persona 1, the small time limit is offset by several things. Just like in Snow Queen, the timer only counts time spent walking around - battles, menus, cutscenes, and being in rooms that are not the main hallways of the museum do not count. There are also no encounters on the first three floors.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We can largely ignore the first floor - there’s no items on it and no kids to save.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Once you go up a floor, there’s no going back. This isn’t that big of a deal, because you can’t miss any of the kids and there’s only three items that aren’t buyable somewhere.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The first of these is in a broken display case directly to the right of where you enter the second floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Progress is in the opposite direction. There’s some five exhibit rooms on this floor, and only one has kids to save. The kids are in the third exhibit hall (the right-hand one) on the left from where you enter.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: To get any further, we need to go through this room so we can get into the hallway behind that wall.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: King Leo has tied up Ixquic and left her to die inside the cockpit of a WWII-era Zero.

Confused: “Is that the cosplayer chick from the bathroom!? What’s she doing in the Zero?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Well, I’d imagine she’s going to Sam and Ida’s for dinner. Maybe she’ll stop at the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces on the way. There really isn’t much else to do on the Zero unless you’re really into cryptic bullshit.

Surprised: “She’s gonna die if she stays in there much longer! What do we do, Tatsuya!?”

Normal: “I’ll jump down and rescue her!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is another moral choice. We want to let Maya do it, even though she’s extremely pyrophobic.

Angry: “We’ll go find a rope! You look after Maya-san, Tatsuya!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Usually when you see this in a game, it takes forever for them to find a rope. Looking at you, Disaster Report.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Ixquic has her mask off, and I swear she looks like she’s from Lunar 2.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Eikichi and Lisa find a rope in like, ten seconds flat. I swear, if they were in Disaster Report the game would’ve been over before it started.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Actually, now I’m imagining a Disaster Day of Crisis remake only with Persona users. Fuck flooding, summon Lucifer to fix that shit.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This dungeon uses a lot of CGI cutscenes, and even though these were redone for the PSP I think it would be amazing to see a Persona game with the same budget as like, Final Fantasy 7 or 8.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Welcome to… a scene that really should be fully explained now but isn’t for some reason.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It should be obvious who this is, but it’s Maya. No one else calls Tatsuya by that honorific.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You can’t hear it, but there’s a banging noise in the background and the doors to the shrine are moving.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meet one of the main villains of Persona 2, though he’s far more important in Eternal Punishment. He’s the reason that you should always use Tatsuya’s canon name of Tatsuya Suou.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This feels like something out of one of the Clock Tower games.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In one final act of desperation, Tatsuya’s Persona awakens. He’s one of the characters lucky enough to have this happen when he needs it. This also means that Tatsuya has been a Persona user longer than any of the Persona 1 cast.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Just as the cutscene fades out, Tatsuya lights the killer on fire. I should mention that this cutscene will be very slightly different if Tatsuya goes into the plane - it’ll be Tatsuya falling and Maya trying to grab him.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I really, really like every one of the cutscenes that happen in the Aerospace Museum… apart from all the ones where Satomi Tadashi is horny for idols again. Also the boss fight cutscene, but we’ll get to that.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s also real dumb that Ixquic doesn’t get to be a party member. They did it for the dipshit kid in Persona 3!

Sad: It’s okay… you’re safe now. You did a great job hanging in there."

9_2iVBrO_400x400: While we’re in the catwalk area, time is paused so we can talk to our party members.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The answer is yep, she was in the plane because King Leo put her there and left her to die.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I went back through the door we came in only to realize you actually want to go through this door. Looking back on the screenshots, you can actually see Ixquic go through this door to get to the roof.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Once we’ve saved Ixquic, we’re done with the second floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The third floor took me a fair bit, mostly because I was looking for an item.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: At first, I had trouble figuring out what the point of this weapon was. True Force has the exact same stats as the guitar case from the store. The difference is that True Force does Almighty damage (which is unresistable) rather than Eikichi’s usual ranged damage type.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Not far from the guitar case is the first group of kids on the third floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: One thing I didn’t show off on the second floor is that if you haven’t saved all the kids, Tamaki or Tadashi will be at the stairs to stop you going up.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What really annoys me about this game, by the way, is that if you go into a room in a dungeon, the game will flip your compass on you.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: With that done, we can now go up to the fourth floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Pictured - Yukino’s Persona.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m not sure how this kid managed to avoid being cut in half by the elevator.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Unfortunately, as soon as we’re done with this cutscene…

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Seriously, this is just Resident Evil at this point. From now until we finish the fourth floor, random encounters will be a thing. The good news is that unlike Thanatos Tower, the timer does not tick down during battles.

Normal: “That asshole…! Is everyone okay!? We’d better be careful… we’ve got demons to look out for now, too!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I don’t know why they kept this line, but I know why it’s there. The answer is that in the original version of Innocent Sin, the timer wasn’t as lenient as it is now. In fact, it was more brutal than even Thanatos Tower: the timer would still run even in battles and menus. Eternal Punishment has a dungeon like this that operates on those rules and it sucks.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There are two new enemies here along with some repeats. Taranis is one of them - they’re incredibly weak to fire, which makes me wonder why King Leo would bother sending them into a burning building.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: A bit south of that exhibit hall, Maya will let us know that the exit is nearby. Unfortunately, we still have one more group of kids that need saving.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: On the way, I ran into the second new enemy type - Kanaloa, who is pretty easy to mistake for the Krakens in Smile Hirasaka and GOLD.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: With about four and a half minutes to go, I find the last exhibit room. I also ran into another fire wall by accident while trying to rotate the compass so that’s why everyone but Tatsuya is at half HP.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The stairs are now unblocked, but there’s one last thing I want to do here. It’s a fusion spell I want to learn so it shows up on the fusion spells list for the boss fight.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Just like Fire + Fire makes Blazing Burst, Water + Water makes a David Cage game. This will be incredibly useful against the upcoming boss as it does slightly more damage than Bane Splash.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I have issues with this scene for more than one reason. The first, of course, is Satomi Tadashi being horny for idols again. The second is that Tamaki absolutely should not lose to a dipshit like King Leo, especially given that she has actual demons.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You know what would’ve been a much better cutscene? If they had Taurus and Scorpio show up and had Tamaki and the Devil Summoner protagonist (now back in his original body) fighting them off.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meet Tatsuya Sudou, the reason that we stuck with Tatsuya’s canon name. I’m going to refer to him by his last name for the rest of the LP, to avoid confusion with Tatsuya Suou.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Unfortunately, we don’t really learn most of what his deal is until Eternal Punishment.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So yeah, Sudou is the guy Tatsuya lit on fire in that flashback. He burned the entire right side of Sudou’s face off, including his eye.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This, I feel, is also kind of dumb.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The same cutscenes that we saw when we accidentally blew up Smile Hirasaka and GOLD play again.

Angry: “That’s frickin’ lowdown, man! This isn’t what you promised!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The whole point of doing those two dungeons was to prevent the explosion, and I feel like if this was Persona 1 they’d have put in an alternate path where Sudou tries to detonate the bombs only to find out the party defused them all.

Angry: “Kehhei… you coward!”

Normal: “Ngh… I’ve had enough of this! Let go of that girl!”

Normal: “What is the End of Nahui-Ollin!? What is Joker’s real goal!? Answer me!”

Normal: “What are you saying… that he’s planning the evolution of humanity!? I’ve had enough of your delusions! Show us Joker! Who is it really!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I actually thought the Exalted One was someone else, but apparently that’s just what Sudou calls Joker.

Surprised: “A summer day… ten years ago!?”

Angry: “And where do you think you’re going!? There’s no escape for you!”

Sad: “Wait! Is Joker… is Joker ‘Big Sis’!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What is this, Metal Gear Solid 3?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In case you’re wondering, there’s a rumor if you talk to random people on the street that the blimp on the roof of the museum actually works.

Normal: “Hurry, everyone!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Someone at Atlus should’ve rigged Satomi Tadashi with an EKG that sets off an alarm any time he gets thirsty for idols. My headcanon is that Tamaki throws him back into the fire with Sudou.

Normal: “Looks like the time has come for the genius driver Maya Amano to show off her skills! Leave this blimp to me! The control room’s probably up ahead.”

Confused: “I don’t mean to be rude, babe, but shouldn’t you let someone else handle this?”

Happy: “C’mon, that was just a little oopsie! I’ve got it now! Here goes the real deal… blast off!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Now, you might ask yourself, 'Wouldn’t it be a horrible idea to try and pilot a blimp that’s been sitting over a burning building, since blimps are full of hydrogen gas and that’s kinda how you get the Hindenburg?"

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I should mention that the entire time this is happening, the background music turns into something that would not sound out of place as a Final Fantasy airship theme.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: See? I knew it was a bad idea. Should’ve gotten Ixquic to start up that Zero somehow and blow a hole in the wall.

Surprised: “A-About that… I think this thing broke! I can’t control it!”

Surprised: “Kaumena! Someone heeeeelp! I don’t want to go down in flames!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: That last line there sort of explains some of Sudou’s deal - he’s spent time in a mental institution, presumably for burning down that shrine we saw in Tatsuya’s flashback and for trying to kill both Tatsuya and Maya.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s also a thing in the PSP version of Eternal Punishment where Satomi Tadashi says that he wrote Sudou as a protest against a Japanese law that prohibits the courts from finding people who have severe mental illness (ie; that do not have the ability to distinguish right from wrong) guilty. As far as I know, that works like the insanity defense in the United States - ie; even though you’re found “not guilty” you’re still put in a mental institution, possibly for life.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is why I’m glad that Tadashi no longer works at Atlus - not because he made a political stand, but because he made about the most dipshit political stand possible. The insanity defense is used in less than 1% of cases in the United States, and only works about a quarter of the time, usually with defendants who were previously diagnosed with severe mental illness.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s also another reasons why Tadashi’s stance doesn’t work in this game, but we’ll get to that later.

Normal: “You sad man… you can’t exist without blaming everything around you.”

Normal: “The reason you can’t live a normal life is because you’re so dependant! Enough of this childishness!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Sudou has around 3,500 HP and is very weak to water and to ice. The good news is that we have that in abundance, but unfortunately ice and electric kinda get screwed in terms of fusion spells.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The one problem is that Tatsuya really doesn’t have much of a role in this fight. Shou Shen has no damage spells right now apart from Fire Breath. Sudou is, of course, immune to fire. Instead, I have him use Shou Shen’s heal move, which is only usable in battle and is basically Mediarama (second-tier full party heal) with a chance to remove status effects.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Sudou’s nastiest move is Dark Fiery Fury, which hits everyone twice - once for physical damage and once for fire damage.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It hits Maya, Eikichi and Yukino pretty hard, but one heal from Tatsuya fixes that. Tatsuya has enough SP that he could probably heal for long enough that the rest of the party could take Sudou down with physical attacks alone.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yukino does the Mr. X thing again and pops the hatch off the blimp. This would probably be dangerous given the whole air pressure differential, but maybe that’s not as much of a problem at this altitude.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This looks a lot worse than it actually is - you can’t see it but they’re over water and a lot lower to the ground than it appears.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh the humanity!

Sigh: “Sheesh… what did we do to deserve all that? I can’t believe we’re still alive!”

Happy: “No worries! Just promise me one thing. Never throw away your life like you almost did before!”

Happy: “And if you have a dream you want to chase, you can’t follow it on someone else’s steam. Whether it comes true all depends on you!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I mean, you can make a popular manga without studying. Just look at Attack on Titan. Dumbest fucking plot in all of anime and yet it sold like nothing else.

Smug: “Dream big, babe! A manga artist is a great choice of career – you’ll inspire dreams in everyone! I’ll even give you some art tips!”

Normal: “Is Joker ‘big sis’? What did you mean by that?”

Sad: “D-did I say that? You’re imagining things, Maya-san!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It shouldn’t be hard at this point to figure out who “big sis” is.

Normal: “…”

Normal: “That reminds me, Tamaki said Ms. Okumura’s at the detective agency. She seems to know something about all this… why don’t we go see her?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Sure. What could possibly go wrong? It’s not like she thinks Lisa is somehow working for Hitler or anything.

Normal: “Ulala! Thank goodness you’re okay! When GOLD exploded, I thought…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The way she says “Ma-ya” makes me think she’s an Animal Crossing villager.

Surprised: “Huh? We’re terrorists in the Masked Circle!? And we’re wanted as the culprits behind the bombings!?”

Surprised: “Oh no… this must be because of that rumor! The one about the five terrorists going around the city! It was about us…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Or because, you know, three buildings and a concert hall just exploded and you were seen in a group at all of them telling people to evacuate because there were bombs.

Angry: “Wh…what the hell, man!? We put ourselves through the wringer stopping those bombings! How dare they treat us like the culprits!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: You might ask how this plot makes any sense given that the Masked Circle really had no reason to go out of their way to procure a bunch of exposives and rig four different buildings to explode when they could’ve just spread a rumor that Tatsuya is a terrorist and accomplished the same thing.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Rest assured it does. It has to do with the Oracle of Maia. We’ll see it in full soon.

Surprised: "That’s not even the worst part! If the rumor comes true… we really will become the Masked Circle’s terrorists!’

Angry: “This is bad… Lisa’s right. We need to think of something…”

Normal: “I think we do have a solution. You know what they say… fight fire with fire!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Dammit Maya, no. You fight fire with water or ice because chances are the fire either absorbs or reflects fire damage. You should know this! You fought one not even minutes ago!

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next time, we’ll find out what the Oracle of Maia actually is and do a dungeon that pretty much sets the basis for the entirety of Persona 4’s dungeon design.

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Persona 2 is definitely not the first Persona game you should play. It’s very different from the later games and only really shares some design concepts. If you’re going to try Persona, I’d recommend starting with Persona 4. If you have a PS2 and can get the game running off a hard drive, do that. If not, P4 Golden is fine - personally, I don’t like a lot of the changes Golden made to P4’s plot. P4 Golden is on Steam now. It’s how I got into the Persona series.

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Oh, I gave the wrong impression. I actually got more than halfway through P3P, then I lost 1+ hours of progress in Tartarus and decided I didn’t actually, y’know, care enough to recover. So I’m familiar enough with it. I’ve also got some other random odds and ends to fill out my resume, like playing a couple hours of Digital Devil Saga, and reading an exhaustingly tiny portion of the Persona 5 LP on the LP Archive. Oh, and I read an LP of Persona 1 by this fellow named “Timrod”.

So, my problem with Persona 3…okay, I don’t really like anything in Persona 3 other than the battle system and the music, both of which are great. And that NPC girl who wants Mitsuru to run her over on her motorcycle. She’s good too. But my serious problem with P3 is…weird. I seem to have an issue where there are several popular game franchises I would like, if only they removed their primary game mechanic.

In Persona’s case, it’s Social Links. For reasons I don’t really understand, I find them anxiety-provoking. Like, I start talking to somebody and I start sweating and I get that feeling like my heart is being squeezed. I have moderate social anxiety, so I guess it relates to that. I’m happy making dialogue choices in a game so long as my choices don’t have meaning; playing through Pokemon Moon was some of the most fun I’ve had with a game, because you can play as a clueless dipshit and it’s hilarious.

I have however, in the last couple months, learned how to treat a game as a system to be toyed with instead of an experience to be had, which is why I decided to try P3P again. I can just sort of ignore the words - I’ve seen most of them already and I know none of them are very interesting - and focus on the numbers. It’s a rather cruel way to look at a game, though.

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Click here for Update 14

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Welcome to Update 14. This is going to be a separate update because the next cutscene contains a MASSIVE plot dump and I wanted to get it squared away before we head into the next dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: When we leave the beach, we’re alone with Tatsuya and Lisa. We’re supposed to head to the Kuzunoha Agency, but instead we want to make a brief detour.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Just outside of Mt. Iwato is this guy, who will tell us about…

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh no. Oh god no.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Kuchisake-onna was the bane of my goddamn existence in Persona 1, where she spams the fuck out of instadeath attacks in a dungeon where dying seals your Persona until you go fetch it from Tartarus. We want to do this sidequest because it awards a Megido card, the next best thing to Megidolaon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And now back to our regularly-scheduled plot dump. I hope you’re ready for some shit that’ll frame the plot for the rest of the game.

Sigh: “We keep asking you… what is this… battle…lion…thing!?”

Sigh: “I can’t make sense of this woman’s ravings… seriously, what’s going on?”

Normal: “We spread the rumor, like Maya-san suggested, but… the rest is still up in the air. We should brace ourselves for the worst.”

Normal: “Ciaaao… sorry I’m late…”

Normal: “Oh, uh… okay, I guess everyone’s here now, so could you start by telling us what you know?”

Okamura: “Before that, I want to know some things from you. How… do you know about the Oracle of Maia?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m just gonna chime in here, because there’s a whole lot to take in right about now.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So first off, this is a very common conspiracy theory among neo-nazi and white supremacy groups in the real world. The part about Hitler escaping Germany at the end of WWII, not the part about the Last Battalion.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If you’ll recall, when I started this LP I said there were a few reasons that Innocent Sin never got localized on the PS1, and this is probably one of them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: On a side note, I actually interviewed an archaeologist who looked into a skull the Soviets found outside the Fuhrerbunker when I was in college. It wasn’t Hitler’s, but he was adamant that there’s no way Hitler escaped that bunker. The Discovery Channel did a thing on it like they do every few years to get views - I think this one was called “Hitler’s Escape”. Anyway, this isn’t even as batshit as this update gets.

Sad: “Th-that’s impossible… I mean, the Masked Circle is…”

Okamura: “The Oracle of Maia was left by the Pleiades aliens who gifted humans with civilization… it’s a message entrusted to us by the Maians!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So yes, now we’re moving straight into the “Ancient Aliens” conspiracy theory. You know, the one with that dipshit on the History Channel.

Okamura: “Did you really think we evolved from apes on our own!? The answers aren’t in the history books! How did man come so far, so fast!?”

Okamura: There’s evidence all over the world of their presence in ancient times! It proves that mankind was guided by an advanced race!"

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I mean, think about it, people! Why do you think Waffle House never closes?! It’s because Waffle House was designed by aliens! They’re using futuristic technology to control the weather and stop storms from destroying the Waffle Houses! The only reason they go on a limited menu is because they need to turn the power to their food replicators down in order to maximize their weather control output! Follow the waffle crumbs!

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I should mention that the “Maian” aliens were used as a plot device in Perfect Dark. They perfected the technology of putting Trent Easton’s head on Elvis’s body to cheese hitboxes in multiplayer.

Okamura: “But the ancient Maians that thrived here died in an intergalactic civil war… the victors were the Bolontiku race that controls Xibalba…”

Okamura: “The Mayan myths of South America prove it. Though that civilization is an ancient memory now… their ruins were all modeled on Sumaru.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yes, I’m sure the Mayans modelled their cities after a Japanese city a thousand years into the future.

Okamura: "Because when the Oracle is fulfilled, Xibalba and the crystal skulls will grand mankind’s ultimate dream… it will end in us becoming Idealians… a transhuman state where we will understand the true meaning of life.

Normal: “Sounds good to me… then we wouldn’t be so upset by trifles anymore.”

Okamura: “It’s far from good! In exchange for the evolution of a few, mankind will perish! Organisms evolve when they face extinction!”

Okamura: “When the Bolontiku thoughtforms take physical bodies, they will bring destruction to all! That’s why we didn’t go public with this!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Don’t worry if none of this makes sense. I’m going to do a summary at the end.

Sad: “No! No! This is all a lie! The Masked Circle is…!”

Sad: "Eikichi! You remember, don’t you!? About playing “the Masked Circle”! "

Sigh: “Like I said, that was in my dream…”

Normal: “…! W-wait… what did you just say…?”

Normal: “That reminds me… your actual name is Lisa, right…!? D-don’t tell me, him too…!?”

Sad: “I’ve been desperately trying to convince myself that it was just a dream… but… it was real!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Wait. What. The Alaya Shrine was in Persona 1. It’s where the Persona 1 cast meets Philemon for the first time, and is located just outside St. Hermelin High School in Mikage-cho. Anyway, let’s talk to our party quick.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We can also talk to Ms. Ideal, who has… quite a lot to say. We’re talking probably 50 dialog boxes. I’m going to summarize this with a timeline, which will explain a lot about this game. Any pieces with (According to Maya Okamura) next to them are Ms. Ideal’s crazy alternate history bullshit train. If somehow you’re a kid doing research, this is a Let’s Play of Persona 2 for the PSP and not an actual history lesson. Please do not include me as a source in your research paper, unless you’re writing about how Waffle House is actually run by aliens.

Thousands of Years Ago (According to Maya Okamura)

  • The Maian aliens have a civil war between two groups: the Bolontiku and the Oxlahuntiku.

  • As the result of the civil war, the Oxlahuntiku flee to the Milky Way, where they contact the Mayan civilization. The Mayans worship the Oxlahuntiku as gods, and in exchange are given technological and evolutionary advancement.

  • The Bolontiku hunt down the Oxlahuntiku and wipe out most of humanity in the process. The Oxlahuntiku win, but are forced into hibernation inside their spaceship: Xibalba. Xibalba buries itself beneath Sumaru City.

Mid 1930s to 1945 (According to Maya Okamura)

  • Adolf Hitler journeys to South America to learn sorcery from the Mayans and becomes immortal in the process.

  • Adolf Hitler starts World War 2 in an attempt to drive mankind to the brink of extinction and force evolution.

  • Hitler and the Axis Powers lose WWII despite him apparently being an immortal sorcerer with near-unlimited powers because ???.

  • During the final days of WWII, Hitler escapes from the Fuhrerbunker with the aid of the Last Battalion, an army of high-tech super soldiers straight out of Wolfenstein. He flees to South America in order to find Xibalba.

Late 1980s

  • Tatsuya Sudou, then a senior at Seven Sisters High School, begins hearing voices in his head. Ms. Ideal claims that he was nervous and afraid of his father, who she describes as “extremely strict” and also a possible pyromaniac.

  • Akinari Kashihara (whose ghost we saw at the clock tower), a history teacher at Sevens, meets Sudou. Sudou idolizes Kashihara and sees him as a father figure.

  • Kashihara believes that Sudou is a medium who is channeling the voices of the Maian aliens. Believing that the voices in Sudou’s head are the Maians trying to make contact, he works with Maya Okamura to write down Sudou’s ramblings. The book they write is titled “In Lak’ech”, which Okamura states is Mayan for “you are another me.” Wonder where we’ve heard that one before?

  • Inside In Lak’ech is a prophecy: the Oracle of Maia, which is supposed to be the method of finding and reviving Xibalba. It revolves around the Maians absorbing “Ideal Energy”, which Okamura describes as “the power of thought held by living beings… a psychological energy emitted when passionate about ideals or when dreams come true”. The skulls we’ve seen the Masked Circle carrying around are vessels for Ideal Energy.

  • Believing that In Lak’ech is too dangerous to exist, Maya Okamura and Akinari Kashihara hide the only copy to prevent the Last Battalion from finding it. Why they even wrote the thing in the first place is unknown.

Early 1990s

  • Akinari Kashihara dies, crushed in the gears of the clock tower at Seven Sisters High School. The reason is unknown, although Maya Okamura blames the Last Battalion.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I sure hope that was a big enough wall of text, because it’s even bigger in-game. I’ll probably do another near the end of the game. Anyway, there’s one last thing…

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is why I wanted to hide the Oracle of Maia. You’ll notice that the first couple of lines refer to things that have already happened: the “frozen time” was the clock tower at Sevens, the “wild dance” and “shadowed festival” were the Kasugayama High arc, and the “foreign song” was the MUSES arc with Lisa.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Next time, we’ll go to Mt. Iwato and visit the Alaya Shrine, which has somehow moved locations since Persona 1. We’ll also get revenge on Kuchisake-onna for being a piece of shit in Thanatos Tower.

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For as nonsensical as it kind of it, I’ve gotta admit the game is at least interesting with its crazy ramblings.

Click here for Update 15

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Now that we’ve listened to Maya Okamura spout off her crazy bullshit, we get what is basically a plot dump disguised as a dungeon. I spread the Kuchisake-onna rumor off screen.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By the way, there’s no point to fusing new Personas… provided you did the moral choices correctly. You’ll see why. I also didn’t bother buying new equipment, because there’s better stuff immediately after this dungeon and if we bought stuff now we wouldn’t have enough for later.

Sad: “We can’t hide from it any more, Eikichi! We know who that girl is… we know about Big Sis!”

Normal: “Hmm… looks like there’s some sensitive business here. If you have a sin you’ve been covering up, why not confess and be at ease?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And now we’re about to learn why this game is called Innocent Sin… even though if you ask the people at the Megami Tensei wiki they’ll claim it has to do with the ending.

Sad: “A sin…? I…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The screen goes white, and then suddenly we’re in Philemon’s giant floating space dildo.

Philemon: “You have begun to recover your forgotten past… if you wish to learn the truth, go to the Alaya Cavern behind this shrine.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The Alaya Cavern was one of the final destinations in Persona 1’s SEBEC route. It’s actually named after a Buddhist concept, but if I have to fight another giant penis monster I swear…

Philemon: “The reflecting pools that show one’s past and inner self shall show you the way to go from there.”

Sad: “Mt. Iwato… where our memories and sins have been buried…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This entire dungeon is going to have a plot very reminiscent of Final Fantasy 8. Persona 2 came out a few months after FF8, so it’s unlikely that Atlus had outright stolen the plot, but… yeah. Given a choice between FF8 and Innocent Sin, I can see why a lot of people picked FF8.

Philemon: “Man’s understanding of time causes him to be trapped in the past and fear the future…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Okay, time for Mt. Iwato. Like I said, we’re specifically not buying any new equipment or fusing any new Personas, even though I could and probably should have.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: As a dungeon, Mt. Iwato is super fucking boring. It’s basically a straight hallway with a bunch of cutscenes in it. Let me post the map.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: See all those rooms with the pink text in them? Every single one of those rooms is a cutscene. They really could’ve paced this a little better.

Sad: “This can’t be… I saw this place all the time in my dreams… it’s really here.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Clearly, the half-dozen fake Makis in Persona 1 were not enough. We needed a Fake Maya too.

Confused: “N-N-No way! That was…”

Sad: “Tatsuya…! Even now, you don’t remember!? Then let’s go deeper… I’m sure you’ll remember who that was…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s a lot of optional dialog in Mt. Plotdump, so I’m bringing back the Optional Dialogue header.

Sad: “But if that really happened… I’ve got no choice but to go…”

Sad: “Why… why did that happen…? Why…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I start walking into Mt. Iwato, and it takes a bit to get into a battle.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Most of the enemies here are recycled from GOLD and the Aerospace Museum. We have plenty of cards and I wanted to get the party’s level up a bit so I stopped negotiating and started nuking.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Lisa’s accessory alerts us to a new fusion spell. It’s called Loiseau de Feu, and is the fire equivalent of Sonic Wave. Everything in Mt. Iwato (apart from a single enemy) is very flammable.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Wait a second! Hold it! Look at Maya! If you’ve played Persona 4 or Persona 5, you’ll have a clue as to what’s going on here. Yes, Maya has an entirely new cut-in image for this dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There are enemies here that go up to Level 31, meaning we’re a few levels behind somehow.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Right near the next cutscene room is an HP incense.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The hilarious part about this is that they animated Tatsuya with a yo-yo, and the animation is exactly two frames.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If you’ve played Persona 3 (or Persona 4 or Persona 5) you’ll know what this mask is. This is a Phoenix Ranger Featherman R mask, which will pop up in all of the subsequent Persona games in some form.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: In Persona 3, it’s on the TV in the dorm room. Persona 4 Golden has an entire Featherman costume set you can unlock. They show up in Futaba’s room in Persona 5 as well.

Jun: “Papa and Mama were fighting today, too… and they promised they’d go to the festival with me. Why are grown-ups always so mad?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yes, Eikichi was the fat kid… even though he’s not really that fat. This is part of the whole thing between him and Hanakouji.

Eikichi: sniffle sob “Y-Yeah… Wh-who’re you…?”

Jun: “Umm… I’m Black Falcon. And this is… Red Eagle, I guess?”

Eikichi: “Th-then I’m Y-Yellow Owl.”

Eikichi: “M-my dad’s r-really scary… h-he’s like, eighteenth rank in k-k-karate and judo…”

Jun: “My papa’s nice to me. He reads books to me and shows me the stars. But he doesn’t get along with mama…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Meet Lisa’s dad, who is a reference that did not at all age well. Lisa’s dad is straight up Steven Seagal, who uh… is kind of a gigantic asshole these days. There’s a good reason the other 80s action movie stars get roles in good movies and he doesn’t. In a way, it fits though, as Lisa’s dad is a colossal asshole.

Jun: “Hey! C’mon over. Wanna play with us?”

Jun: “A justice hero would never pick on anyone! Come on!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Eikichi spending most of his time on the ground is apparently nothing new.

Jun: “Hahahaha! Oh man, what’re we gonna do with you, Yellow?”

Jun: “Whew… I’m tired… I haven’t laughed this much in a while…”

Lisa: “Hey, um… will you guys keep being my friends?”

Eikichi: “Of c-course! W-we’ll always be p-p-pals! R-right!?”

Jun: “Oh, I know! We’re missing one, but we do have four rangers here. Let’s come up with a name for our group! It’ll be just between us. We’ll be secret friends who never take off their masks when they meet!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So yes, this is another case of the whole “Erusaer Tsymmom” thing that Persona 1 did.

Sad: “Now do you remember, Tatsuya!? We all met each other a long time ago!”

Sad: “We’re the ones who formed the Masked Circle! And… and…!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yukino is totally thinking “Wow, I’m glad the Persona 1 cast wasn’t that dumb. Apart from Ayase.”

Sad: “Yeah… that’s right, Tatsuya… that was us back when we were kids… it wasn’t just a dream… we met for the first time that night at the festival at the Alaya Shrine!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Right near the cutscene room is a secret room. You can see it on the map, it’s between the first and second cutscene rooms. There are five of these rooms in Mt. Iwato, and we ABSOLUTELY want to visit all of them. Why?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So, remember in Persona 1 how you got the “ultimate” Personas by picking the moral choices correctly, and you got the totem items at the end of the game? The masks here ARE those totem items. If you miss one, there’s no coming back for it and you are permanently screwed out of each character’s ultimate Persona. Yes, they’re just sitting in a random-ass midgame dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s entirely possible that unless you’re using a map, you could miss one or more of the masks. The worst part is that unlike Persona 1 where the ultimate Personas were all kinda garbage (except Elly’s), the ones in Innocent Sin have a unique fusion spell in addition to multiple top-tier damage spells. The fusion spell requires all five ultimates.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If you haven’t read the Persona 1 LP, Yukino is talking about Snow Queen, which starts when Ms. Saeko (who we met earlier) puts on a cursed mask.

Sad: “This… is where I hid my mask… back then… hiding my face made me feel like a different person. I didn’t have to worry about the color of my hair or eyes.”

Sad: “That’s right… we came here afterwards and hid our masks… and forgot all about it ever since…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Get your stuff, people, time to trundle along to the next cutscene.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Camazotz and Principality are two of the new enemies here. Camazotz isn’t that bad, Principality randomly casts instant death spells. Somehow, that makes him less bad than in Persona 1 where he reflected practically everything.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By the way, Maya won’t negotiate with demons for… some reason. I wonder why? This locks us out of making pacts with about half the demons here. I made one with Camazotz for some cards since that only requires Eikichi and Tatsuya.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Mt. Iwato really feels like that dungeon in YIIK. There’s a few items hidden around, but most of them aren’t necessary. That incense we got earlier is one of the ones worth picking up.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Time for the second of four reflecting pools.

Lisa: “Paaaaper!”

Eikichi: “S-S-scissors!”

Tatsuya: “…”

Lisa: “Okay, then today… we’re gonna play house!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It’s not lupus. Oh boy, time to go abuse pain medication. There, I played House.

Eikichi: “W-whaaat!? C-c’mon… let’s d-draw today, I-I brought my c-c-crayons…”

Jun: “Sorry, Yellow. She’s the boss, so we have to listen to what she says no matter what. That’s the rule.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Incidentally, this was the plot of one of the worst episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Lisa: “Umm, Red will be the daddy, and I’ll be the mommy, of course. And you’ll be my big brother, Black!”

Eikichi: “A-Am I the b-baby again…? F-fine…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I read this and all I could think of is how Eikichi totally should’ve responded like that one water commercial people kept turning into a Youtube Poop years ago.

Lisa: “Daaarling! The kids are all tucked in now, so let’s take a bath together!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I think the black-masked kid lost the plot somewhere.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Culebre is another new enemy. He’s water-based and technically resists fire, but Loiseau de Feu and Mega Blaze will still oneshot them.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Nearby is Eikichi’s mask. That makes two. I’m going to skip the optional dialogue because it’s not really important.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: It took me almost two full floors to find Kuchisake-onna, but I did.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: She tries the old sleep-lock tactic that wiped my party in the Alaya Cavern in Persona 1, but that doesn’t work with five people. Two Loiseau de Feu later and she’s gone.

Sad: “We must’ve sealed everything up so that our sins wouldn’t catch up to us… including our memories… I’m sorry, Tatsuya.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Oh! I know! It’s “There’s no line, just come on in.”

Normal: “There’s no more disgusting phrase in all the world. It’s used to displace your suffering onto others so you can escape your sins… the moment you employ it, your suffering becomes the other person’s. A thing can be unforgivable, but oh, if they apologize…”

Normal: “I say there’s no reason to accept that suffering. You don’t have to forgive them. Cast aside the mask of your conscience.”

Sad: “The Ta-chan I knew then was a lot more energetic… it’s probably our fault that you became so distant. I know that words can never be enough… but there’s nothing else I can do now besides apologize. I’m so sorry…”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This was optional dialogue, but I’m going to cast aside the mask of my conscience and not mark it because it’s the first real instance where something’s clearly wrong with Maya… assuming you haven’t played Persona 4 or 5.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Finally, we reach B2F. B2F has something ripped straight out of the Ice Palace in Persona 1, and this was where I got the map out.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here, we run into Cwn Annwn. I looked up how you pronounce it and it sounds like “Coon a-noon”. “Coon A-Noon” sounds like a lunch hour radio show hosted by a raccoon furry. Anyway, Cwn Annwn is easily the most annoying demon in this dungeon.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: They’re very fast, usually going before the party does. They also have a spell that causes them to explode and instakill a single person. When they’re not using that, they have a bunch of group-target spells that take forever to resolve even on “skip” mode.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The second floor starts with a small room that looks like a dead end. It isn’t. You just kind of clip through this wall and keep going. This is the intended route.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This room here? With the ice crystals? This room is an annoying piece of shit. It’s basically a minefield, only the mines are pit traps that cause you to drop down a floor.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: What you want to do here is sort of make a route shaped like a backwards question mark. I’ll show you the in-game map.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I intentionally fell down this hole because there’s a few items and a unique demon in a box on the floor below.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This guy is… I actually don’t know. The game refers to him as “Demon King” and I think he’s supposed to be some kind of ancient Chinese or Japanese general. He’s really nothing special except that he has gravity-based spells. I don’t think we’ve seen a single Persona with a gravity spell yet.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: By this point, everyone in the party is pretty close to level 30… apart from Lisa, who is still behind.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The only other treasure worth getting in here are these Miracle Eggs. Everything else is common healing items we can buy at the store.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Agrippa can spawn here as a regular enemy. He’s level 31 and resistant to magic, but vulnerable to physical damage.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Back on B2F, I use the map to get around the pit traps.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Here’s the route to get around all of that. You mostly want to stick to the right wall, make a slight left around the big crystal formation, and then stick to the north wall.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The third reflecting pool is on B3F, but on a different part of it that we can only access through the staircase that’s past all the pit traps.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I didn’t do the math until now, but at this point, Maya is 13 and the rest of the cast are either 6 or 7 years old. It just seems weird to me that you’d let kids that young play by themselves, even in the late 90s.

Lisa: “Whatcha doing, Big Sis?”

MayaSmile: “I’m visiting the shrine. I’m praying to become what I want in the future… like that!”

Lisa: “Ohh, neat! But if you join the Masked Circle, you can be what you want right now!”

Eikichi: “Wh-whatever the b-boss of the Masked C-Circle says goes. Th-the boss gets to decide what everyone d–does and b-becomes.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Sound familiar at all? Not like that’s what we’ve been going through for the past several hours.

MayaSmile: “Wow! Then will you make me what I want to be too?”

Eikichi: “Wh-what should we d-do? I-I wouldn’t m-mind letting her j-join our group…”

Jun: “Yeah… are you okay with it, Red?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is a retcon of Persona 1. In Persona 1, it’s established that the only reason the Persona Game works is because of the DEVA System interfacing with Maki and overwriting reality with her dream world. Theoretically, once the DEVA system blew up at the end of Persona 1, that should’ve been the end of it. Nevermind that this scene is happening in 1989 and the DEVA System wasn’t built until 1996.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This also means that the Persona 2 party have had their Personas since before the Persona 1 cast.

Sad: “Yeah… Yeah! That’s right! We loved Big Sis! She was beautiful… energetic… kind… she taught us to follow our dreams… and then… I…”

Sad: “We played the Persona Game together. Big Sis watched us with a huge smile on her face the whole time… she told us that whether our dream comes true depends on us! But then… I… I…!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Mt. Iwato really is just a cutscene hallway.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: There’s one last secret room on B2F - it’s on the other side of B2F from where the minefield is. Technically this isn’t the last secret room. There’s one more, but it should be obvious why we don’t need to go there.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m going to skip most of the optional dialogue in this room, except for Maya’s and Yukino’s. Most of it’s stuff we’ve heard before.

Normal: “But don’t you think the one who was forgotten would feel horrible? Real life isn’t a video game. You can’t just press the reset button. The sins you’ve committed will never disappear.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I mean, unless you’re Takahisa Kandori.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I had to turn back from the final area because I forgot this chest with 30,000 yen in it. Where did a bunch of elementary schoolers get $300?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: B3F is boring. It’s a straight shot to the boss with very little in it.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Picollus is another new enemy who only seems to show up near the end, despite being level 30 to Agrippa’s 31. They’re extremely slow and extremely flammable.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: B3F has one last secret room. This one is not required to get all of the ultimate Personas: if you think about it, we’ve already found masks belonging to all of the characters in our party. The last one would be the boy in the black mask… who we haven’t met yet. Or have we?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Finally, outside the secret room there’s a new weapon for Lisa.

Lisa: "But members of the Masked Circle will always be together… that’s our rule… you promised us!’

Lisa: "…Liar! You lied to us, Big Sis!’

Eikichi: “Ta-chan! You’re the boss today, right!? Order her not to go!”

Tatsuya: “…”

Eikichi: “Jun! You gotta say something! Are you gonna just let Big Sis go away!?”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We know his name now. Jun is the boy that exchanged gifts with Tatsuya in that flashback in the bomb shelter.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: And now we know how Maya got locked in that shrine. Of course, we also know what happened after. I feel like this is kind of just bad pacing. There’s no reason we couldn’t have had this revelation at the Aerospace Museum, or even before that.

Sad: “Don’t… please stop!”

Sad: “I get it… I didn’t forget… so please, no more…”

Crying: “It wasn’t you… this is all my fault… I… I’m such an idiot! I was so scared of what I did that I tried to convince myself it was all a dream…”

Sad: “I knew. Ever since I heard the name Masked Circle… I started to remember that was happened was real…”

Sad: “The last ten years… I had hoped it was all just a bad dream. Eventually, I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. I began to think it had all been in my head.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Now, here’s something strange. If you’ll recall, Tatsuya was outside the shrine when he met Sudou and burned his eye.

Crying: “We thought if she spent one night there, she wouldn’t be able to move away… we were such dumb kids. It didn’t make much sense…”

Sad: “When we came back the next day, the shrine had been burned to the ground. I was scared… I thought I had killed Big Sis and Tatsuya…”

Crying: “Jun, Ginko, and me… we hid our masks in this secret hideout, crying our eyes out, and made one last rule never to meet again.”

Crying: “Way later, I heard a rumor that Tatsuya had been stabbed by the arsonist, but lived… still, I didn’t dare show my face.”

Crying: “You tried to protect our Big Sis to the very end… but I… killed her…”

Normal: “So that’s why you were so confused… you were just a kid. Then this ‘Big Sis’ is still alive? That’s good to hear.”

Sad: “King Leo said Joker was “as beautiful as a goddess”! Big Sis was like that!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: All of a sudden, Maya starts strangling Tatsuya before throwing him backwards.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Maya pulls out her Persona, Reverse Maia. This is Maya’s Shadow, which also happens to be the upcoming boss.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: She casts another spell to try and kill the party off (despite the fact that Tatsuya and Yukino could beat her by themselves) but…

Normal: “Ciao, everyone. Sorry I’m late. That Maya’s an impostor, probably caused by those terrorist rumors… she’s a spy from the Masked Circle!”

Joker: “Leave now. That is, if you value your life.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The only person in the Masked Circle who isn’t in our party is Joker! Who could’ve guessed?

Sad: “I’m alive… you don’t have to suffer anymore…”

Joker: “Stop! That’s impossible! Tatsuya killed you!”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: We have a new possible fusion spell. Four of them, actually. Agrippa has learned a move called Summon Spirits, which combines with any of the basic element spels (fire, earth, water, wind) to make four fusion spells called Sylph, Undine, Gnome, and Salamander. These are okay replacements for things like Mega Blaze and Maxi Tempest that only take two people to perform.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Our party starts at half health. Shadow Maya opens with Aquadyne, which two of our five party members null.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So here’s the problem. Shadow Maya is extremely resistant to magic. Blazing Burst does like 90 damage to her, and even Loiseau de Feu struggles to break three digits.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: To make things worse, Shadow Maya has a move called Diamond Dust, which is basically Mabufula with a higher freeze chance. She also has a poison attack.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: So how did I handle this fight? Well, like this… sort of. Everyone but Tatsuya on auto-attack, Tatsuya using Shouchikubai, which heals the entire party for a good chunk of damage and can also remove status effects. I set this up and then went and had lunch.

Sad: “All this time, my Persona’s been telling me you were Big Sis! I’m sorry… I…!”

Crying: “I…I did something so terrible… I’ll understand if you hold a grudge over it…”

Sad: “No… this is all because of an unfortunate misunderstanding that started that day… if anything, I’m glad to be able to see you all again. I’d never resent you! On the contrary, it’s you who should…”

Sad: “You’re… also a false me born from a rumor…”

Philemon: “I am honored that you remember. You have all grown splendidly, yet you have not lost the shine in your eyes from those days.”

Philemon: “In homage to your strong will, I grant you power… the strength of your hearts and kindness has awakened your true Personas.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: This is one thing I really don’t like about Innocent Sin. When Persona 1 did this with the ultimate Personas, it would tell you exactly why you got (or didn’t get) them. Here, we have no idea why. In each case, it’s because we made a choice before a boss fight: one in Zodiac, one in Aoba Park and one in the Aerospace Museum. Tatsuya gets his if (and ONLY if) everyone else gets theirs.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: These, by the way, are the Prime Personas. They’re basically everyone’s starter Persona levelled up to around 35 and given a better move set.

Philemon: “He sought to use rumors for his own ends, but has been swallowed by them, and is acting to fulfill mankind’s ultimate dream…”

Philemon: “Such was not Jun Kurosu’s original desire… his mind is snared in rumors and is slowly becoming something inhuman.”

Philemon: “The holy cross is the Grand Cross, and Nahui-Ollin is the world of the fifth sun. There is no time to lose before it perishes.”

9_2iVBrO_400x400: If you’ve ever read Lovecraft, you know who the Crawling Chaos is. If not, you might’ve seen him in the Persona 1 LP under his proper name: Nyarlathotep.

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9_2iVBrO_400x400: In Persona 1, Nyarathotep was Takahisa Kandori’s Persona… though really, it was more the case that he was being controlled by it. Nyarlathotep was basically a throwaway villain: it eats Kandori…

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9_2iVBrO_400x400: And makes him into a monster. It then dies when Jihei and the Persona 1 cast riddle it with bullets. You can actually fuse Nyarlathotep as a Persona for Reiji, but it sucks.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Persona 2 also retcons this. Now, Nyarlathotep is a major villain and also the one pulling Jun’s strings. He apparently exists as an SMT demon in the Persona universe, the same way that Nyx did in Snow Queen.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I hope you’re ready for this, because the bullshit rocket that is the plot is about to hit outer space.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: War planes. Futuristic Nazi warplanes.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: I’m pretty sure the original version of this cutscene had swastikas on all of the planes, rather than the Iron Cross. This was a change made in the PSP version.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Yes, Persona 2 is now Wolfenstein. Giant Nazi mechs.

9_2iVBrO_400x400: Where’s BJ Blazkowitz when you need him?

9_2iVBrO_400x400: The Last Battalion has invaded Sumaru City. Next time, we kill some Nazis.

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Pacing aside I think this part of the game is pretty cool. There’s still some degree of mystery, as to how Tatsuya and Maya survived being locked in the shrine and why we saw Tatsuya outside when he’s supposed to be inside, but I imagine we’ll find out eventually.

Anyway, hell yeah time to murder some fucking nazis. That sounds great.

So uh… here’s the thing about that. Apparently, they never really address it in the game - it’s something that’s in supplementary material that never got translated and also in Eternal Punishment. It’s also kind of a plot hole. I’ll probably do an entire side update containing spoilers for EP that will just be titled “What’s the fucking deal with the shrine cutscene?”

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… damn. Persona 2 is a oddly put together game.