Wow, they… really treat Yukino like shit in this game. And I have a feeling the canon route won’t be any kinder…
At least we have Tatsuya. I made the only correct choice on the poll, and I hope you all join me on that one.
Hitler The Fuhrer is just wearing his pair of fashionable Dictators sunglasses. 
jrpg 
writers stop reading nietzsche please
1 Like
Okay, I stopped reading to laugh my head off at Literally Steven I’m Just A Lowly Cook Seagal being Lisa’s father.
I nearly spat my dinner out laughing at Smug Ass Cool Shades Jetpack Hitler Fuhrer.
I am still laughing at Shadow Lisa.
The worst part of it is that Nanjo and Elly are playable in Eternal Punishment, and absolutely nothing bad happens to either of them. I do know that Innocent Sin received some backlash in Japan when it released, so I wouldn’t doubt if they changed that because of people’s reception to how Yukino is treated in IS.
Yeah, well, he’s not the only one who can do sunglasses out of nowhere.
Alternate villain version:
Honestly, I knew Fuhrer was in the game but I had no idea that scene existed and it was goddamn hilarious when it happened. I kind of wish I had recorded it, because I’m pretty sure my exact words were:
“Wait, does Hitler have a jetpack?”
followed by
“Why is that everyone in this game can fly except the people you play as?”
2 Likes
When I saw a playthrough of this game years back, I think I had a higher opinion of it because they never did that optional route.
Click Here for Update 18
: Okay, now it’s time for the canon run of Caracol. What? Do I have something on my face? First, I stopped and fused Abe no Seimei. Abe no Seimei kinda sucks by itself, but it has Summon Spirits which I wind up using to great effect.
New Persona: Abe no Seimei
Origin: Real Person (Japan)
Persona 2 Original
: Anyway, Abe no Seimei is great for one reason and one reason only: he reflects magic. He has a unique fusion spell, but here’s the problem with that. Byakko is level 33, Genbu is level 40, Abe no Seimei is 41… and then Suzaku and Seiryuu are 58 and 59. By that point, you’ll have the Ultimate Personas who have a better 5-way fusion spell. : Once you scalp the Holy Lance trio on the mountain peak, you can take the cable car to and from Caracol. I had to stop and buy healing items shortly after going back in, but that’s not a big deal. : Most of the items we missed aren’t all that important. There’s a Strength Card right near the entrance, but regular enemies drop those now. : The only other chest worth grabbing on the first floor is 45,000 yen on the opposite side of the map from the Strength Card. We’re going to need a lot of money very soon, because there’s new equipment after Caracol but also because we’ll need, uh… 2.5 million yen to buy everyone’s ultimate weapon if I bother to do that. : Because this party’s level is so much higher than the non-canon run, I made a pact with Crowley straight up. He gives you 55 magician cards and 41 free cards, and is 100% consistent to negotiate with. By the time I finished the canon run, the party had something like… 950 free cards in stock. : We make it to the first Nazi battle in one of the cutscene rooms. This time, the commander opts not to flee and gets scalped with his men. Between the two runs, we’re now well over 80 scalps, and I believe we hit 100 by the end of the canon run. : There’s one other piece of optional dialog here because we have Yukino, but other than that there’s no real changes. : On B3F, there’s an encounter I missed with Succubus, who is in a box with an HP incense. : When we get close to the spot where we fought Shadow Yukino, Yukino jumps in to let us know she’s coming for her girlfriend. : Now that we’re on the canon route, things are a little bit different here. I still can’t say I like this version. : They say that, but then they never see the knife coming for their scalp. : Seriously, what is with this pseudo-intellectual gibberish? It’s like I’m watching Evangelion all over again. : Now THAT’S the Yukino we know and love. This line is voiced, and Yukino’s Japanese VA absolutely fucking nails it (I’m playing an undub). : Anyway, there’s three Holy Lance mechs. The middle one is weak to fire, the one on the left is weak to earth, and the one on the right is weak to wind. : With this party combination, we can get a Blazing Burst, a Gnome, and a Garudyne off every turn. This equates to roughly 800 damage per turn on the fire-weak and earth-weak ones, and a bit less on the wind-weak one. : The nazis respond by casting full-party target spells and Geisteblitz, which is basically Mazionga (full-party lightning damage + shock). : What they forget is that half the party reflects magic. Unfortunately, as I find out a bit later, reflection does not work against their Longinus Copy (which seals the target’s Persona). : They hit Maya with it, sealing her Persona. At this point, it doesn’t matter. They’ve wasted so much time on damage spells that are ultimately getting reflected back into their faces that they’re all dead before the seal wears off. : As you can see, the party is already significantly higher level than the non-canon one. At this point, we can negotiate with all but about two or three demons.
: “Because you remind me of how I was once. I had no idea what I wanted or why I should go on living. I wished everything would disappear.”
: “I was being a baby. You can’t figure stuff like that out when you want it too bad. You have to calm down and take your time…”
: “You bastard… you’re just a frickin’ fake–”
: “What…? But then… what will you do, Yukki?”
: I don’t need Personas anymore. I can keep my head high and walk on my own now… it’s time I passed these feelings on to someone else."
: “Understood… but there aren’t many who can remember their identity when in this domain. Can you state your name?”
: “My name… is Jun… Jun Kurosu! That’s… all I am now!”
: “Well done. I can indeed vouch for the strength of heart you possess to reflect on yourself and your kindness towards others.”
New Persona: Hermes
Origin: Greece
Persona 2 Original
: There’s one major problem with this apart from that it sucks and that’s that it makes no sense in terms of Jungian psychology. Hermes isn’t a bad Persona at all, apart form the fact that most Personas in the same level range have -dyne or ma-dyne spells by now.
: “It’s so warm… thank you, Mayuzumi-san… I won’t waste your feelings.”
: “It seems the others have also found their true Personas that caused such changes in them when they were young… these will grant you power.”
New Persona: Apollo
Origin: Greece
First Appearance: Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei (SNES)
: So yes, with just a single dungeon between Mt. Iwato and Caracol, we’ve already gotten everyone but Jun’s ultimate Persona. Hermes is not his ultimate. : Continuing the tradition from Persona 1, Apollo is trash. His moveset’s great, but his stats and resistances aren’t. Also, there’s the small matter of the fucking 72 SP cost, which would blow through even Tatsuya’s massive SP pool very quickly. : You might also notice that fusion spell lists Chronos. Chronos is Jun’s Ultimate Persona. There’s a stupid theming thing going on here where Tatsuya gets Apollo because of Jun’s lighter (even though Apollo is the god of the sun and not the god of fire) and Jun gets Chronos because of Tatsuya’s watch.
New Persona: Artemis
Origin: Greece
First Appearance: Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei (SNES)
: Just like Tatsuya’s Persona, Artemis is another bonus demon from the remakes of Megami Tensei I and II. She’s SIGNIFICANTLY better than Apollo is. If it weren’t for the completely ridiculous SP cost, I would stick Artemis on Maya and never take it off.
New Persona: Venus
Origin: Rome (technically Greece as Aphrodite)
First Appearance: Ronde (Sega Saturn)
: And of course, Atlus had to fuck up the theme of the Greek pantheon with Venus, instead of using her Greek name of Aphrodite. She’s got the same deal as Apollo - great moveset, SP cost that’s way too high ,meh everything else.
New Persona: Hades
Origin: Greece
First Appearance: Ronde (Sega Saturn)
: Hades is fucking trash. Why the fuck do you have Malaques AND Malaquadyne and no other elemental coverage? Why is your SP cost the highest of all of the ultimates? Why are you fucking Discount Pyramid Head? : Needless to say, all the ultimates are going in the trash except for Artemis. I’ll probably use Artemis for bosses so I can do the “everyone reflects everything” strat I did back in Snow Queen.
: “Don’t worry, leave it to us! We’ll thrash those bad guys in no time and make sure you get your parents back!”
: “Hey, Big Maya… I don’t think now’s the time to ask stuff like that…”
: “Well, guess what? These guys are going to teach you a chant that’ll make your dreams come true!”
: “It’s a flower of hope.”
: “If the Ideal Energy stored in the five skulls is released, the people I turned into shadowmen may be returned to normal…”
: “The skulls are the key and the power source for activating Xibalba. If we take back all the skulls and bring down Xibalba before the Grand Cross happens, we can prevent further tragedy…”
: “By now, they’ll have placed the skulls of earth, water, wind, and fire in their respective shrines to control them there. Our goal should be to take back these four skulls, and then take over Xibalba.”
: “My father should be chasing the Heaven Skull and the Fuhrer to the center of Xibalba.”
: “The battle between the Masked Circle and the Last Battalion is spilling over into the city. People might get caught in the crossfire. And I thought if that happens, it’d be best to have someone who can fight there to handle it. I don’t want anyone else to die…”
: “I see what you mean, but… it’s crazy to try and fight them alone and without a Persona, even for you!”
: “Then there’s nothing to worry about! Take good care of Yukki for us, Anna-san!”
: “Please, Tatsuya, I’ll need your strength… I have to stop Father! It’s the only way I can atone for what I’ve done.”
1 Like
I mean you’d think in that case said boots would be really strong. He has exactly one weakpoint, gotta cover that shit up with diamond or something.
I wish the entire like, back half of this game was better, because there’s a lot of stuff coming here that could be cool. Like if Yukino actually just straight up accepted her shadow, which she basically does here, and it just fades away because she IS good. If Jun was added to the party in a way that wasn’t stupid. If the ultimate personas were actually… you know, good. But instead it is all sort of lack luster, and that’s just a shame.
Jun you can lose the whole possessed red eyes thing you’re on Team Protagonist now.
Also is there no world where Akari joins? I dunno it’d make me laugh seeing her trying way too hard to be the Big Hero Champion of Justice. brb drawing Akari’s superhero vision of herself in her head punching Jetpack Hitler’s cool shades off his face in his moonbase.
Unfortunately, no. Akari is in Eternal Punishment, but by that point she’s basically an ordinary teenage girl. She hangs out in Giga Macho and I think that’s the only place you ever see her in that game. In fact, I’m pretty sure that portrait she has in that scene is a new one that was done for the PSP remake and wasn’t in the PS1 release.
The closest she ever comes to becoming playable is in Persona 4 DAN, where she’s a DLC costume… for Nanako. Nevermind the fact that Akari is 13 and Nanako is… I think 7 years old in DAN. I could only take DAN for a short time on the Vita before I dropped it.
The problem is that the whole plot is kinda dumb.
Handy advice for all you writers out there!
Make a list of all the things that happen in your story, in order. Is there an item on your list that reads “Then the Third Reich appears in their giant robots”? This is an indication that your story likely has issues throughout and may need to be thoroughly rethought.
Click Here for Update 19
: Now that we’re done with the disaster that is Caracol, we can move on. I went to the Velvet Room quick to see what I could fuse, and uh…
: Armaiti was the Persona that Yukino had equipped at the end of Snow Queen. She (the game gets her gender wrong, Eternal Punishment and Persona 1 get it correct) got nerfed pretty hard from Persona 1 but is still pretty good. I didn’t wind up fusing her though because her compatibility kinda sucks.
New Persona: Kundali Vidyaraja
Origin: India
First Appearance: Majin Tensei II (SNES)
: Instead, I go with Kundali Vidyaraja, who apparently is the Buddhist god responsible for dispensing Amrita. He’s good for two reasons: first, when combined with Quetzalcoatl, he enables us to use an upgraded version of Loiseau de Feu that scales. Second, he learns High Pressure, which is a key ingredient in a couple of good fusion spells.
: The next part of the game plays a hell of a lot like Snow Queen did in Persona 1. There’s four zodiac temples: Aquarius, Scorpio, Taurus, and Leo. Ordinarily, you’d want to go to Aquarius Temple first because that’s where Jun’s ultimate Persona is. In fact, I may do a “canon run” where I go there first and then re-do Taurus Temple. I’ll explain why later.
: Anyway, just like Snow Queen, once you go into a temple you’re locked in until you’ve defeated the boss. You can leave, but you can’t enter any of the other temples. There’s no Thanatos Tower this time that’s higher level than the rest - they’re all the same except that the final floor of each temple has two configurations that change based on the order you do them in.
: I’m gonna go ahead and post the map.
: Thankfully, I’ve been trying to learn Japanese again and I kinda sorta remember katakana now. Because of this, I know that all but two chests in this version of Taurus Temple are traps. Note that we’re going to the “A” variation of the third floor, not the “B” variation.
: Because of our Persona setup, we can access the final tier of fusion spells for each element. They’re performed by using a spell of that element, a spell that does Almighty damage (there’s a bunch, since the Zan spell line, Gry spell line, and Megido spell line are all the same) and the ma-dyne spell of the same element. As an example, I did Meltdown with Agilao from Tatsuya, Zanma from Eikichi and Maragidyne from Lisa.
: Meltdown does enough damage to oneshot every single enemy in this dungeon apart from one of the Nazi units that resists magic.
: There’s only three new demons in this dungeon that aren’t on the encounter list for Caracol. Melchizedek gives lots of cards and there’s really no reason not to make a pact with him since we’re high enough level to do so.
: Here’s a protip if you plan on playing this yourself for whatever reason. London Clothier in Kounan sells the best armor we can get right now, and I wound up buying all of it. This is one of the reasons I want to do another run: Ankou is a super common encounter, has a very consistent negotiation, and drops Fluted Shoes if you ask him for an item. Ankou is also one of the few enemies that needs a combo negotiation technique to make a pact with, in this case with Jun and Lisa.
: My guess is that Tatsuya is canonically bisexual. Let’s just watch this negotiation because it’s some shit and this dungeon is short anyway.
: Jun is such a bottom that if you leave him in one place for too long he starts sinking into the ground.
: There’s two of these Relief Halls, which are basically just spots where the writers dumped optional dialogue.
: The Kommandant in the back immediately runs away to avoid being instakilled. The rest of the Nazis go down in one hit before even getting an attack off. I forgot to show it, but I cashed in Tatsuya’s old Persona for an leg armor item that increases all stats by 6, which means that Tatsuya isn’t always going last now.
: It took me until the end of the dungeon to realize what the point of this was. It’s telling you which of the temples will have their last floors changed: if you do Taurus (Earth) first, Scorpio (wind) and Aquarius (water) will have their “B version” third floors.
: This is pretty much the only temple that makes thematic sense: Lisa got tempted by Prince Taurus/whatever the fuck his name was, and so Taurus Temple has her Shadow in it. I like that Prince Taurus escaped his bossfight and we just never hear from him again.
: Yeah, I mean, we’re now into the 21st century and Atlus is STILL making games about high schoolers saving the world. Eternal Punishment is the only Persona game where none of the characters are high schoolers, and I feel like they need to do it again. Make a Persona 7 where the Persona 1 cast comes back and they’re all over 30.
: Taurus Temple has some very simple conveyor belt puzzles, which are extremely merciful in that none of them really lose you too much progress if you screw up. I thought I was going to have to do a complete loop around the dungeon to grab one chest, but I didn’t have to at all.
: We could, you know, do a loop up at the top for no reason, or we could just take the one on the right that goes forward.
: This room is completely optional - the only reason to go through here at all is because there’s an incense on the other side. Speaking of which, I haven’t been using any of the ones we’ve picked up so far and probably should at some point.
: There’s a fight here and I think by this point you can guess how it goes. If Meltdown can kill five of these guys in one shot, it sure as hell can kill four of them. There’s some optional dialog which is the party teasing Lisa, and meh.
: Here’s that box I was talking about. Inside…
: Well, fuck. Inside is Cerberus, AKA Pascal the Dog. We can’t contact him, so I was forced to devil bust him for an incense. When I said Meltdown kills everything in one hit, it also applies to him.
: Our party is monstrously overlevelled right now to the point where regular encounters are giving around a thousand experience each and we need over 30,000 to level up.
: There’s a conveyor belt maze just outside where that box was, but fortunately you can just kinda… bypass it completely. I don’t even know why the level designers put them there in the first place.
: Going back around and through that cutscene room allows us to get to the stairs going down to the third floor, which is really straightforward.
: There’s a very simple maze that’s practically impossible to screw up: you take one set of conveyors north and then a second set of conveyors. I feel like the level designers were trying to atone for letting Damage Floor Guy loose when they were doing the bomb shelter.
: Within around half an hour, we’re at the boss. I could’ve done it faster if I hadn’t bothered to pick up the incense.
: Before we go fight Lisa’s shadow, we want to make sure she has Venus equipped. This makes the bossfight suck significantly more than it would if we didn’t. I tried ranking Venus up, but I’d like to point something out.
: At level 44, Lisa has exactly 400 max SP assuming you never use any incenses on her. Every single spell Venus has costs 72 SP, regardless of if you’re using it alone or as part of a fusion. This means that from full SP, Lisa can use Venus exactly five times before she has to recover. Getting to Rank 2 blew through half her SP bar and gave us exactly jack and shit for doing so.
: So uh, some background we didn’t get because I never had a reason to go to Lisa’s house. Lisa hates her dad because he wants her to be a “proper Japanese woman” and refuses to let her learn English. That’s why she does the whole random Chinese thing, because it pisses her dad off.
: The thing is, this is supposed to be a major plot point and it’s completely optional as to whether you even run into it.
: Her face will never stop being funny.
: The wiki claims that what they’re referring to here is the practice of compensated dating. It’s not quite the same thing as sex work, it’s more like a cabaret club (if you’ve ever played Yakuza 0 or Yakuza Kiwami 2) but without the actual club.
: Steven is her father’s name by the way. My guess is that Lisa smoked a joint once.
: What’s funny is that unlike Yukino’s Shadow, Lisa’s actually, you know, brings up things that are relevant. Seriously though I imagine Lisa as the kind of person who took a single hit off a joint once and was like “that’s it, I’m a hardcore drug girl now”.
: “You’re absolutely right… I was a pathetic little girl for a long time… but I’m different now. I found what I lost…”
: “You should remember, if you’re me. My dream ten years ago was to marry my first love… Tatsuya…”
: What the fuck is she talking about? No, there’s no plot twist of Tatsuya being dead the whole time, or having died in the shrine fire. This is almost as weak as Yosuke’s shadow at the beginning of Persona 4, only that was at the very beginning of the game before we really knew any of the characters. We’re like, 3/4 done with the game.
:“I won’t let anyone tell me how I feel. Tatsuya’s feeling are his business. But my feelings are mine… and even if Tatsuya hates me, I love him.”
: Seriously though, this is what we got instead of continuing to have Yukino in the party. Lisa is an even more basic bitch than Ayase, and I didn’t even think that was possible. Her Shadow doesn’t even have substance!
: I mean, think about what we’ve just seen here. It starts off with the Shadow talking about how she does compensated dating (or possibly selling her underwear, who knows) and maybe did weed once, and then they just go on about how they love Tatsuya. It’s like I’m watching reality TV.
: Shadow Lisa’s Persona is Reverse Venus, which is basically Venus with better resistances. If you have Venus equipped on Lisa when you do this fight, it upgrades to match Reverse Venus’s resistances, but does not get any other improvements.
: This fight is one of those where you just set up an auto-battle and take a nap. Shadow Lisa has Venus’s moveset, but all the moves have “Dark” in front of them. Really the most dangerous thing she can do is cast Makarakarn, which reflects the next spell cast at her.
: The thing is, unless you’re either very underlevelled or very unlucky, she’s probably only going to do that once before she dies, and it won’t do enough damage to kill anyone with the reflect.
: I’m not even kidding when I say that I set auto-battle up, set up FRAPS to take a screencap every few seconds, and then went and got lunch. This entire second half of the game feels really phoned in.
: Why didn’t this happen for Yukino? WHY DIDN’T THIS HAPPEN FOR YUKINO!? This game’s plot makes less sense than Ni no Kuni 2’s did, and I feel like Atlus had no idea what the fuck they were doing anymore and just kind of figured they’d crank out the rest of Innocent Sin and then fix it in Eternal Punishment.
: So, the “best” option here is to either pick the first option or pick the last one. The first one gets a new group contact between Tatsuya and Lisa. The second one gives you a new contact with Tatsuya and Maya, which I think you can get elsewhere. The third gives you a new contact with Tatsuya and Jun, which… you get later in the game anyway. The fourth one gets you nothing because Eikichi isn’t gay, and the last one gets you the Lisa contact only a bit later in the game.
: However, the thread overwhelmingly voted for Tatsuya to be gay, and so he will be. It’s probably a better choice anyway, given how basic Lisa is.
: Yes Lisa, you’ve been after a guy who had zero interest in you the entire time and now you know he’s gay. Congratulations, you’re a dipshit.
: By the way, the “canon” relationship is that Tatsuya is Maya-sexual. In fact, if we assume Tatsuya is gay, there’s a whole lot of shit that will not make any goddamn sense later.
: It feels kinda tone-deaf that Maya and Lisa are fighting over a man who just told them he’s gay.
: Next time, I’ll probably reset and do Aquarius Temple first so I can get that contact. On the canon route, Tatsuya is still gay.
: By the way, there’s another group contact you can get if you go into the Velvet Room. You have to talk to Eikichi, leave the Velvet Room, and then talk to him again.
: Selecting the first one gets you a new group contact.
2 Likes
Dang it’s like the writers sometimes remember that having teenagers with magic psychology spirits could let them have people facing their insecurities and maybe showing kids they’re not so alone.
Also with that grin I feel like Shadow Lisa is missing something…
That’s the stuff.
1 Like
This is an extremely good edit and I like it a lot, thank you for making this.
Tatsuya being like “… I am in love with Jun” and everyone completely ignoring him to fight over him, while he and Jun just exchange shrugs is… extremely in character for this idiots, I think?
Also seeing them just casually allow you to go “I’m into Jun” and have it count as canon, and then looking at… every other Persona game, is frustrating me. Let me date the cute boys god damnit.
As far as I can tell the only difference between being 17 and being 30 is you get more left-wing and play more Animal Crossing, so they wouldn’t have to change much.
I was going to make a joke about why you’re waiting for Persona 7 when Persona 6 isn’t going to come out until 2050, but I looked up the years between Persona games and the sequence is actually more arcane than I expected.
Though I believe in Japan that is a crime requiring you to be sealed in the deepest level of Tartarus and having your name stricken from the Book of Life.
That’s what this game needs.
Yeah. The entire thing feels like an anomaly given the atmosphere of the game - I mean, when you have a writer with a self-insert character who is there solely to ship himself with an idol. I think part of it is that up until the middle of the PS2 era, Atlus was pretty much entirely composed of straight guys. Even now I’m pretty sure that’s still true.
My hope is that they’ve finally learned something after the controversy over Catherine Full Body and start diversifying the character base a little bit. I’d love to see a modern Persona game where there are female characters who aren’t thirsty for the protagonist, or where there’s gay representation.
All I’m saying is I’d like them to do what a lot of other RPG franchises already have and age the game up with their audience. Persona 4 came out over a decade ago - there’s people who were in high school when they played it who have since graduated college and have jobs. Hell, by the time Persona 6 comes out the same will be true of people who played Persona 5 around the same age.
Click Here for Update 20
: So here’s my attempt at Aquarius Temple, wherein I learn that Aquarius Temple fucking sucks. We’ll be handling all three of the remaining temples in this update because they’re all basically the same.
: Problem number one with Aquarius Temple, it’s full of green Masked Circle enemies. The problem here is that the only fusion spell I can cast on the same turn as Meltdown is Sylph… which is wind-based and which these enemies are immune to. This means that if we get our turn order fucked over (by something like a status effect) we’re going to be floundering around until it gets fixed.
: The second floor is full of pit traps. I ran into one trying to find a box that turned out to have nothing in it.
: Compound this with this encounter, which has two Scharf Schutze in the back. They have a spell called Sharpshoot, which does an instakill but is gun-type rather than light or dark. Both of them use it immediately, and then use it again when I try to revive Eikichi so I can use Meltdown.
: Then they use it again because fuck you that’s why.
: The second floor has a bunch of pit traps and no useful chests, so you want to move roughly like this to get around them.
: Just like Taurus Temple, all of the Zodiac Temples have two rooms, one which is a fight against Masked Circle troops and the other of which is a fight against Nazis. I’m not sure if it counts if you scalp the guy who scalped a Nazi or
not.
: All of the optional dialogue in this room is the same, except for these two lines.
: There’s a Strength Incense near the second cutscene room, and that’s pretty much all the items in Aquarius we give a shit about. There are some spell cards I picked up but none of them were anything amazing.
: I actually had to look this up, but he’s right. For some stupid reason, Aquarius is the zodiac sign for wind.
: "That’s not true, Jun-kun! You said when you were little that you wanted to be a teacher, didn’t you? Well, what’s a teacher’s job but to lead his students to their ideals?
: “There you go again. Moping like that has been a bad habit of yours ever since you were a kid, Jun.”
: “C’mon, houhou! See, you gotta cheer up! Houhou! Houhou!”
: He does it so hard the screen shakes.
: The money is right before the second relief room, and the card is right after it. If you do Aquarius Temple after doing… whichever the one is that changes its layout… there’s a Luck Incense down here as well.
: Before we go in, we want to equip Hermes on Jun. This is how we get his ultimate Persona - having Hermes equipped for this fight gives it the ability to mutate into Chronos at max rank.
: I also did some shoe shopping before going into the boss room. This time around, I didn’t even bother upgrading armor or weapons.
: I can tell you for sure that I wasn’t even thinking about how little sense this dialog makes when I was playing through this in recording. Instead, I was more like “God dammit game I’m already asleep do I really have to do four of these?”
: This fight is annoying. There’s three Holy Lance units: one’s weak to earth, one’s weak to wind, and one’s weak to water. I believe either one or two of them null Fire, which means that Meltdown won’t do us any good.
: Early on, I just used Sylph and had the other three party members use regular spells. Meltdown simply wasn’t worth it because both times I tried it, it did no damage - I think they can also avoid it somehow.
: I got into a very nasty situation where both Tatsuya and Lisa had their Persona sealed and Jun was confused. I believe on the next turn, Eikichi got shocked and Maya got frozen to boot. Jun nearly died and I had to use a couple of rattle drinks to keep the party up.
: There’s a couple of things that made this fight suck less - the biggest one being that I still have two characters that reflect magic, so any spells the bosses cast were getting reflected back at them for extra damage. The other is that I had the ability to access about half of the “Elemental Spell + Summon Spirits” line of fusion spells (including Gnome, Sylph, Salamander and a few others) to mix up my elemental damage.
: This isn’t going to make a lot of sense until we learn who Queen Aquarius was. Unfortunately, we’re not going to learn that until the final dungeon. I did check, and the game DOES tell you… just not until way later for some reason.
: I took a quick trip to the Velvet Room for one reason, and it’s not Chronos. Chronos has the same problems as all of the ultimates - SP cost is too damn high. No, I came here for a different reason. Now that we’ve hit Level 46…
New Persona: Cerberus Pascal the Dog
Origin: Greece
First Appearance: Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei (Novel)
: In Persona 1, Pascal the Dog was a Persona I fused as a stopgap while grinding. In this game, he’s much better, though not as good as he is in Eternal Punishment. While his moveset may look kinda garbage (given that he’s still using Tier 2 spells at level 51), High Pressure is a skill used in a two-person fusion spell that’s actually pretty good, plus he still supports Meltdown.
: Pascal is also great in that he’s got Best compatibility with everyone.
: Let’s plow through Leo Temple next. I started noticing that the party is creeping up in levels, and there’s a tiny problem with that. You see, there’s one of those 1% encounter rate demons I want to get. It’s level 51, and by the time I finished Scorpio Temple the party was rapidly approaching level 49 (this was on the second run where I didn’t do Taurus Temple first). I still got most of the boxes but by this point I was mostly running from or negotiating out of random encounters.
: Leo Temple is a bit more complex than Aquarius or Taurus in design. Let’s post the map.
: Due to the route I picked, none of the dungeons had their B-version third floors. As it turns out, each element strengthens one other and weakens one other, and it just so happened that doing Aquarius first and Leo second meant that none of the other dungeons could be in their B layout.
: First and most important is 50,000 yen on the right side of the first floor.
: I got lucky, and Pascal immediately mutated to Rank 3. I’m glad this happened early because there was something I didn’t realize going in - the masked circle enemies here null fire attacks.
: Getting Pascal to Rank 3 allows us to summon up the power of the God Hand. Unfortunately, this does not include the Ball Buster or Head Slicer… or Yes Man Kablaam. Instead, it does slightly less damage than Meltdown but only takes two people and does Almighty damage.
: On the left side of the first floor is Dordona’s Oar, an item I probably should’ve picked up before I did Aquarius Temple. Dordona’s Oar fuses a Persona that’s basically Kundali Vidyaraja but slightly better.
: The second floor has multiple entrances. Going in from the northernmost staircase brings you to a Vitality Card. I don’t know why I bothered picking this up.
: Because I’m not using Meltdown anymore, Take-Mikazuchi is my new go-to fusion spell for the second half of each turn. You perform it by casting a spell called Thunder Baptism (which is basically Zionga) and Summon Spirits.
: Right, moving on.
: Right outside the Relief Room is a box I skipped on purpose because it’s empty. I don’t know why they even bothered putting it there when it’s like… three steps off the main route.
: Surprise! It’s another relief room with Masked Circle troops in it. Spotted the pattern yet?
: This fight’s bad because the enemies have an attack that hits for both physical and fire damage. Maya and Jun were at full HP before I went into that room. If Maya wasn’t reflecting the fire damage, there’s a good chance she would’ve died.
: This dialogue doesn’t change if you told the party that Tatsuya is gay. I don’t know if I captured it, but the game will refer to them as “best friends” from here on out. Let’s just say… I have a plan to rectify that. I’ll talk about that at the end of the update when it’ll make more sense.
: “If you keep putting on public displays of bro-hood with him, you’re gonna find a raging bull of envy after you…”
: I have a feeling that if this hadn’t released in 1999, they’d have just straight-up said it.
: “I said that Leo is fitting for Tatsuya. Don’t you think, Lisa? He’s strong, free, and won’t be tied down by anyone…”
: “And that’s really all you said!?”
: “Mm-hmm.”
: “Well… okay then…”
: The thing I’d like you to remember though is that this dialog plays even if you haven’t done Taurus Temple yet, which we haven’t on this run. Even if you don’t explicitly have Tatsuya say he’s gay, there’s definitely hints to it.
: “Ahaha… Taurus is perfect for Lisa.”
: Anyway, let’s just skip ahead to the boss room. There’s really nothing else on this floor that matters - a couple of chests with healing items we could buy from the store and that’s it.
: I made sure to equip Tatsuya with Apollo to get the bonus resistances. What I found out later is that even if you don’t equip the Ultimate Persona for the shadow fights, they’ll still get the boost as long as you have them equipped when the fight ends. There’s even alternate dialog for it, which we’ll see in Scorpio Temple.
: If anyone in this game needs a sunglasses edit, Shadow Tatsuya is absolutely it.
Remember that choice we made at the very beginning of the game when we were hunting down Ms. Saeko? This is where it comes into play. It doesn’t change anything, other than that if you tell her you have no plans for your future, Shadow Tatsuya will say something like “You’re being true to your nature” or some shit.
: It doesn’t matter what you answer here. I picked the first option.
: This is kind of hilariously off if you assume that Tatsuya is gay.
: Remember how I said in Taurus Temple that you get the new contact with Jun regardless? This is where it happens. If you pick either of the bottom two options, you get the new contact. I couldn’t figure out which one would make more sense if we assume that Tatsuya is gay and Jun is his boyfriend, so I went with the second one.
: I’d like to think that the shadows are like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, only instead of not being able to see things standing still they can’t comprehend the concept of not being straight. I’m further imagining the characters in Persona 4 going “Just be gay, they can’t see you if you’re gay”.
: Shadow Tatsuya is annoying for a couple of reasons. First, he’s de facto immune to lightning spells. My initial autobattle setup was God Hand with Jun and Eikichi, Take-Mikazuchi with Maya and Lisa, and then Tatsuya doing physical attacks because Shadow Tatsuya is immune to everything Apollo can dish out.
!
: By de facto immune, I mean that while Shadow Tatsuya shouldn’t be immune to lightning, it… just doesn’t hit him. I think this is because bosses are immune to status effects and both the Zio and Bufu spell lines have a status effect attached… and the developers forgot to just make the boss immune to Shock/Freeze instead of the entire spell.
: I didn’t realize this until… probably 3/4 of the boss’s health was gone. The game kept cutting the camera away so I couldn’t see that there were no damage numbers. God Hand and Tatsuya’s physical attacks did a good enough job of bringing him down to the point where I could’ve just left the auto setup as-is and taken a nap.
: It was about here that I realized that by the time we’re done with all four temples (keeping in mind I haven’t done Taurus yet on this file) the party is going to be pushing level 50.
: And that’s Leo Temple done. Now we just need to do Scorpio, which is the most complex of the four Zodiac dungeons. Leo Temple requires you to make a minor routing change (if you get the “B” version of the third floor, you take a different staircase and it’s like a minute detour if you get the wrong one) depending on which version you get, while Scorpio requires much larger changes.
: Before I headed into Scorpio I restocked on healing items. Scorpio Temple is easily the most annoying one.
: Let’s post the map while I’m at it.
: Another relief hall. Can you guess what happens here?
: Shortly after the first relief hall, we find Scorpio Temple’s gimmick. See that puddle on the floor?
: Those are damage floors that damage SP. There’s enough of them that even if your party is at full SP when you reach the first one, they’ll be at or near zero when you reach the last one.
: Finally. It took TWO FUCKING GAMES, but it finally happened! This is Persona Chat. It’s stupidly rare in Persona 1 (I believe it has a small chance to happen on a New Moon) and still pretty rare in Persona 2.
: Persona Chat occurs when one of your party members has a Persona version of a demon and you encounter that demon in the field. I never once had this happen in P1, and we’ve encountered Barbatos easily thirty times thus far (if not more) with Eikichi having Barbatos as a Persona.
: Persona Chat is basically an automatic Eager negotiation. I kind of wish I had the script for Innocent Sin the way I did for Persona 1, because Persona 1 had some surprisingly good dialog in these.
: My route through here makes me hit like five damage floors, so the party’s SP is suffering. At one point, Eikichi and Jun reach zero.
: The only box I care about in this entire dungeon has a Phoenix in it that drops an incense.
: I am very, very glad that damage floors did not survive into Persona 4 and 5.
: Welcome to one of the most nonsensical twists in this game.
: “What is this!? What’s going on!? Why are you with that fake…? A-And you’ve lost weight…”
: I kind of hate this. I mean, it’s not a bad scene, but… like… why did they have to make her thin?
: “I-I… drove Hanakouji-san to this…?”
: “B-But why did you join the Masked Circle…!?”
: Now, two things I’d like to point out. First, Miyabi was at Sumaru Prison when Eikichi’s band got their hopes and dreams drained from them. She KNEW joining the Masked Circle was a bad idea.
: Second, she knew that Eikichi loved her no matter what she looked like. It was made pretty clear back in Zodiac.
: “Get your filthy paws off her, you goddamned fake… Miyabi’s… she’s MY girl!”
: Shadow Eikichi somehow goes from merely strange looking to looking like he’s got to take a shit.
: Now, you might’ve noticed that I forgot to do something before going into the boss room. Fortunately, I still had Hades in the party’s Persona stock even though it wasn’t equipped.
: My auto-battle strategy this time is Salamander and Blazing Burst. Does some 700 damage a turn, and with this I could more or less set it and alt-tab out of my capture card window. I equipped Hades onto Eikichi immediately after the battle started, and this is how I found out that it’s fine as long as the Ultimate Persona is equipped when the battle ends.
: One amusing detail is that instead of doing what all the other Shadows do and adding a “Dark” to every move, Bloody Honeymoon becomes Bloody Divorce.
: And with that, the party is dangerously close to 51. They’ll be a minimum of 49 by the time I finish Taurus again (which I still haven’t done) and I might need to fuse something with that Estoma card to make sure I don’t overlevel.
: Remember back in Leo Temple when I said that I had plans to rectify the game not acknowledging Tatsuya and Jun being in love? A few updates ago (specifically when I was doing Caracol) I contacted an artist who had done Persona 4 fanart and commissioned a piece of Yukino and Anna on a date because I figured the thread would enjoy it. Thankfully, they had some life stuff get in the way, because I saw this scene and went “Oh shit, I know what the thread’s going to want.”
: I got in touch with the artist again and commissioned a follow-up piece of Jun and Tatsuya in that same pose with the heart background, because I knew the thread would demand it. I can’t promise it’ll be done before the LP is, but I’ll be sure to post them in the thread when they’re done.
: “That was really cool of you, Michel!”
: “Eikichi-kun’s Manliness increased by 10! Now if you can get past your hangup about your dad, you’ll be all set.”
: “Aww, why’d you have to bring him up? Everything was going so well…”
: And with that, we’ve done all four Zodiac temples. I’ll do Taurus again and then it’s on to the final dungeon. Next time will be an Abandoned Factory update.
2 Likes
Now that we’re near the end of the game, I wanted to gauge interest on what I should LP next. I have a couple of choices, though I might need to explore a bit further to determine how viable some of them are as SSLPs. Here’s some of what I was thinking of:
SMT Series
Shin Megami Tensei IV - There’s no LP of it on the archive and someone did Apocalypse (which is admittedly missing images now since it doesn’t use the site to host) here. Cons are that I can’t do this on real hardware and capture it at the same time since 3DS capture cards are basically nonexistent. If I do this, I’d probably do my own LP of Apocalypse since the other one is missing images and at that point I’d have a de jure claim on it. I’ve never played SMT 4.
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers - No LP of it exists on the archive, though people have done Devil Summoner and both Raidou games. This would be the 3DS version since the Saturn version is sadly un-translated. Same con as SMT 4 in that I can’t do it on real hardware even though I actually own a copy of the game, which I played about five minutes of before dropping because I couldn’t stand the first person view when it first released. This was before I did my first Persona 1 run.
Shin Megami Tensei: If - Someone suggested this earlier in the thread. An LP of it does exist on the archive, but it pre-dates the fan translation and all of the images are in Japanese. While I could do this on real hardware, I probably wouldn’t want to given that it has multiple routes and I’m afraid of burning out on it the way I did on SMT 1.
Devil Survivor: Overclocked - Somehow, no LP of this exists on the archive. The original DS release was my first exposure to mainline SMT, and I got about halfway through it before getting stuck because I had no idea what I was doing. There is an LP of Devil Survivor 2, but not of Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker.
Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei - There’s a person doing a VLP of Megami Tensei I NES, but this is a remake on the SNES. As far as I can tell, both Megami Tensei I and Megami Tensei II are pretty short and I’m pretty sure I could do them on real hardware. Same problem as SMT If in that I’m afraid of burnout.
Others
Enchanted Arms - I’ve heard this is a pretty mediocre JRPG but that it has some neat design elements to it. I have it on my 360’s hard drive but haven’t ever played it. Not sure how suitable it is for an SSLP.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition - This one would definitely NOT be a completionist LP because I tried that once (not in LP format, just casually) and you will burn out very quickly if you try to do all the sidequests. I played through about a third of this on the Wii, but have not touched the DE despite owning it.
1 Like
Well, if you want to stick with just SMT choices and let luck decide the next LP (barring technological barriers), just number the following six choices in any order you choose and roll a die to see what you’ll get: Eternal Punishment, 4 + Apocalypse, Soul Hackers, If and any info on Hazama’s Chapter you could find, Overclocked and Record Breaker, and Kyuuyaku. Honestly they all seem like viable choices to me and whichever one you choose would be one more LP that hadn’t been done before but should’ve been by this point. Besides other games in the smaller subseries like Last Bible, Majin Tensei, and Devil Children, and one-offs like Giten Megami Tensei and Card Summoner, those are the only viable choices left that haven’t been done for LPing yet.
Just be sure to pace yourself and/or do other games if you feel like you’re starting to burn out over any aspect of what game you choose.
Oh I wasn’t aware you were apparently a saint.
As for what game to do next… honestly, I wanna see you do Devil Survivor. I played it myself and it seemed super cool but also I had like a billion other things to do that weren’t “devote myself to the time it takes to beat an SMT game completely” so I dropped it. That’s the one I’m most interested in, of these games.
(also do Eternal Punishment)