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: 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..”
:“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.”
