Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyeah no matter the country I am absolutely not surprised that teenagers would make those kinds of assumptions about their classmates.
It’s weird here though, because presumably they’re people who have known her for some time. In fact, there’s something they probably would know that we don’t yet - namely why Lisa keeps inserting random Cantonese words into everything she says - that ties into why she doesn’t speak English.
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Click Here for Update 9
: Welcome back to Giga Macho, where my PSP died halfway through because of my idiot dog pulling the plug on it. : Giga Macho is very big and for the most part very empty. There’s a guy near the front who will sell us CDs that we can listen to at Maya’s apartment, but there’s not really much of a point in that since this is a screenshot LP. : Giga Macho is largely populated by the same enemies that were in Mu, only we run into them more frequently. Cockatrice is an annoying piece of shit. It barely gives you cards: most enemies around this point in the game are giving you somewhere around 20 cards and another 15-20 free cards if you have a pact. Cockatrice gives you 9 world cards and 6 free cards. You want a pact with it mostly because they spam poison to no end. : Lisa’s accessory alerts us to two new fusion spells we can do with our new Personas. : Maxi Tempest is one of them and I didn’t find the other one before my PSP died. It’s the inverse of Mega Blaze - where Mega Blaze is Fire → Wind → Fire, Maxi Tempest is Wind → Fire → Wind. : I took the liberty of grinding a bit and found our first Demon Rumor. Demon Rumors are a bit weird. You get them by making a pact with a demon, making that demon Happy again, and then asking for information. : You then need to talk to two different demon types to get the second half, which is either “Jack Frost knows Atomic Bufula and it’s strong” or “Jack Frost knows Atomic Bufula and it’s weak.” : The tradeoff is that if you say it’s strong, you can fuse Jack Frost and he’ll have the spell and benefit from that, but so will the enemy Jack Frosts. : Here’s the thing about Giga Macho. As it turns out, there’s an elevator on the first floor that goes up to the end of the dungeon. You can skip probably 80% of the dungeon. The reason we don’t want to is because there’s a couple of unique demons and because we need the EXP and cards. : Here, we encounter our first new demon: Wraith. I never really bothered to fight one because the EXP from killing one isn’t really worth it and the 20 Devil cards it gives are a better option. : There’s a couple of chewing souls in a box on this floor somewhere, but this box is trapped, because this isn’t enough of a filler dungeon. : The third floor has the stairs pretty much right next to where you enter it, but instead we want to go down here. At some point, Lisa got possessed by a Moh Shuvuu, which is basically a confusion effect. : Lich is a unique demon, but isn’t really worth a whole lot. It has a couple of physical attacks that target the entire party, but I didn’t see much beyond that because a single Blazing Burst/Pegasus Strike combo killed it in one turn. : Honestly, unless you’re looking for the unique demons for some reason, there’s no reason not to just take the elevator to the fourth floor. Most of the demons we’ve run into are repeats that aren’t worth fighting. : I didn’t bother getting the Atomic Bufula, but here’s Jack Frost. This is where my PSP died. What sucked is that it went to sleep and had the game still running so I could’ve recovered, but the dock is really fucky and wouldn’t recognize the video output. When that happens, you have to power cycle it. Innocent Sin also doesn’t have the “suspend save” feature that Persona 1 did as far as I know, so I couldn’t have saved it that way. : Second run through, I find Kinnara in the first encounter. If you’ll remember, we have him as a Persona. He’s not a bad pact option because like Nekomata, he gives 15 free cards on negotiation. He also has an instant death spell. : This time, I find the chewing souls on the second floor. That other sparkle on the map is the trapped box. : On the third floor, we run into Tengu. Tengu is a great pact choice, as he gives 17 free cards (the second-highest of all the demons in Giga Macho) and is very easy to negotiate with. : After like an hour, I made it back to roughly where the PSP’s battery died last time. : There’s a Trish’s Spring by the elevator, but she now charges 15,000 yen for healing. : What we actually want to do though is jump back in the elevator and go to the fifth floor. The reason is that the place the elevator takes you to there is cut off from the rest of the floor, but has a new weapon for Yukino in it. That green puddle is a damage floor that damages SP. : Back on the fourth floor, there’s a box kind of near the stairs going up. This is another unique demon encounter. : Rasputin is a gimmick miniboss who is completely immune to magic of all types but is very weak to physical attacks. : There’s a Strength Incense in the same room. : Other than Rasputin, there’s not much of interest on the upper floors. The guide recommended I grind to 18, so I did. : Our destination is right here, at the FM Viewing Studio on the fifth floor. Before we go in though, we want to do one thing. : Normally, you’d want to equip Lisa with her starter Persona, but we already cashed that in, so I gave her the Pixie instead. This is important because as soon as we enter the next room, we get locked out of using whatever Persona she has equipped for a while. The game will remember which one she has as well, so we can’t use that to fuse another one. : This guy reminds me a lot of Geoff Keighley. It seems weird to me that they’d have a recording booth in a CD store as a permanent fixture like this. : This guy totally isn’t a member of the Masked Circle. : I apologize for the text being somewhat cut off. For all the stuff Affinity Photo advertises about non-destructive workflow, it sure had no problem overwriting my original shots with the cropped ones.
: “Oh, geez! What should I do, Tatsuya!? Kaumena! Help me!”
: “I don’t think you have a choice! Time to bite the bullet and go do this! Try and pry out as much information as you can!”
: “Hey, Tatsuya-kun. Do you detect a faint Persona resonance in that Sasaki guy? I wonder if he’s one of the Masked Circle… if he is, Lisa’s in trouble.”
: “But if we go along with the plan, we might get some juicy details on the Masked Circle. Well, it’s all up to Lisa now.”
: “Ng Hai! There is a certain gentleman! Actually, he’s here today!”
: “Awww, you should’ve said so before… baby be mine! I’m gonna give you a whole lotta love!”
: “My Chinyan isn’t a twisted narcissist like him!”
: "I knew it!’
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Click Here for Update 10
: Before we go to Aoba Park, we have a couple of side things to do. First, we need to hand in the Dresser Hag quest (which I forgot to do entirely) before we do the next dungeon. It becomes unavailable after that even if you’ve completed it. : This is also your last opportunity to feed 10,000 yen into the dog statue to get two incense sets, but given what’s going on right now I think we can safely say fuck that. : Aoba has a lot of stuff in it. This is actually where you start the game in Eternal Punishment - Kismet Publishing is where Maya works. We’re going to take a brief detour to Sumaru TV. It’s not part of a quest, but.. : It’s weird to me that they’d phrase it like that, because in this game a phrase like “whose popularity is skyrocketing right now” would imply that he’s allied with Joker. He’s not. : In case you haven’t read the Persona 1 LP, Brown was one of the four possible party members you could choose from in the main route. We wound up using him for Snow Queen. : On with the side stuff. First, we want to talk to this guy outside of Aoba Park. : This is a sidequest that’s technically worth the 3,000 yen admission price, but you’d need a guide (or repeated playthroughs of Aoba Park) to figure out how to actually get your money’s worth in most cases. : We can also meet another rumormonger if we go to Double Slash in the Aoba Way mall. : Baofu is a party member in Eternal Punishment. We’ve actually met him in person already in this game, but in a throwaway scene you’re not likely to remember by the time you get around to EP. I haven’t played EP yet, so I’ll just spoilertext it: Baofu is the drunken guy that was in Tatsuya’s flashback in the bunker at Kasugayama High. : Baofu doesn’t have any useful information for us just yet, but it’s good to know this is how you contact him. : Our second stop is back at Shiraishi Ramen, where we turned the owner into a Russian spy. The guy standing next to Maya offers us a sidequest. : This sidequest is a reference to a Japanese pop musician by the name of Linda Yamamoto. She’s kind of like a Japanese Cher, in that she was big in the 60s and 70s and then disappeared for a while only to be revived every few decades like some kind of musical Dracula. : As the fan mentions, she did something that at the time was seen as scandalous: namely exposing her midriff while performing. Probably her most famous song is called Sharpshoot, which appeared in Ouendan 1 and is the only song from that game I refuse to have on my MP3 player because god her voice is like a goddamn cheese grater. : We also want to talk to Chikarin, who for some reason has the rumors we want to spread in regards to weapon and armor stores in Aoba. : The next stop is Todoroki, in order to spread a couple of rumors. We want to spread both of the ones Chikarin gave us, as well as “An idol’s ghost has been sighted!” and “Flowers can talk.” : I stopped at Claire de Lune to buy weapons, and ran into.. Linda Yamamoto. Apparently, having a rumor spread that you’re dead does not actually kill you, meaning that unfortunately, Hanya is probably alive. This will actually prove to be a major plot point.. in Persona 5 Royal. I’m thinking of dunking on that after I finish Innocent Sin. : I just wanted to point out a couple of things. First, I forgot to actually equip any of the armor we bought the last time we went to a store. Second, this is the weapon we found for Yukino inside Giga Macho, which I remind you was the last dungeon we finished not even half an hour ago. Would you believe me if I told you there’s a weapon for Tatsuya in the next dungeon that’s already obsolete when we pick it up? : Our last stop is the Velvet Room. I was kind of shocked that we can fuse Nemesis as a Persona, given its status as a boss in Persona 1. Unfortunately, Nemesis is not great and we won’t be fusing it.
New Persona: Gandharva
Origin: India (Hindu)
First Appearance: Megami Tensei II (NES)
: At first, I thought fusing Gandharva was a mistake. I accidentally gave him to Tatsuya, who he only has neutral compatibility with. as it turns out, fusing him was not a mistake.
New Persona: Otohime
Origin: Japan
First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei II (SNES)
: Otohime is key to a couple of fusion spells I pick up in Aoba Park. She was one of the worst things to fight when I did the Thanatos First route in Persona 1, and was kind of a garbage Persona in that game, but here she’s much better. : Just north of the entrance to Aoba Park is our first talking flower. These all work the same: they ask you a question, and if you answer correctly they give you an item. If you don’t, they either poison you, do damage to the entire party, or put people to sleep. : The correct answer here is the second one. : Aoba Park is largely full of the same demons we fought at Giga Macho, only there’s more of them per encounter. This proves to be kind of annoying: Tengu (in the back) are immune to wind and Kinnara (in front) are immune to fire. This means we can’t use Mega Blaze or Maxi Tempest to wipe them all out at once. : We run into Linda not long after entering. She’s a pretty straightforward fight - no major resistances and weak to all physical damage types. : She drops her bra, which we can turn in for a reward. : Kiyohime was a rare spawn in Giga Macho that I never saw despite going through Giga Macho twice. Here, she’s much more common. If you make a pact with any demon in Aoba Park, make it with Kiyohime: she gives 20 Free Cards per negotiation and is the reason I wound up with over 400 free cards by the end of Aoba Park. : Aoba Park is kind of annoying because as you can see on the map, most of the hedges are not marked. That red grate is a damage floor, but unlike Giga Macho we can avoid all of them. : Fjalar is one of the two new enemies for Aoba Park, and also the only one we can’t negotiate with due to him being one level above us… even though Yukino has him as a Persona. They’re usually not worth fighting because they only come alone or with one other Fjalar, and the EXP for fighting them isn’t great. : We do a big loop, and wind up at the second flower. : I feel like this flower would not be out of place as an Animal Crossing villager. : After I met this flower, I realized I had made a few tactical errors. First, I forgot to actually fuse that Angel I said I did a few updates ago, so I had no source of healing. Second, I had equipped Gandharva to Tatsuya not knowing they had neutral compatibility. I wound up mutating Surya (Tatsuya’s old Persona) into Fukurokuju but never used him.
New Persona: Fukurokuju
Origin: Japan
Persona 2 Original
: Fukurokuju doesn’t really add anything to our elemental coverage, and in fact makes it worse. : Back in Aoba Park again, I discovered a couple of new fusion spells we can do. : Towering Inferno is like Blazing Burst, only it takes three people and doesn’t scale with Dexterity. It’s not great, but it’s there. It’s performed by casting a water spell, an earth spell, and a fire spell in that order. : Next, I discover our replacement for Mega Blaze. Sonic Wave also doesn’t scale, but it does Ma-dyne tier damage. : I’m pretty sure that the first part of Aoba Park is bigger than Mu was. : There’s a Vitality card here which is really the only important piece of loot in the entire dungeon. : The gate here is a load screen that leads into the second part of Aoba Park. : This also sounds like an Animal Crossing villager, only one of the original Gamecube/N64 ones. : The answer we want here is “Thorns and poison”. : This bead pretty much makes up for the cost of the rumor. : The North side of Aoba Park has a trash can in it with a unique item, but it’s kind of already obsolete. The blue grate above Tatsuya is a damage floor that damages SP. : First though, we run into Angel, the other new enemy in Aoba Park. I also realized that I fused an Angel but never actually put it in the Persona roster so I wound up just using items to heal instead. : The unique item is the Rainbow Light. It’s a “material card” which works a lot like the totem items in Persona 1. You make a Persona of the correct arcana and add the Rainbow Light as a material card to get a different Persona. : I’ll post Iris’s stat sheet so you can understand why we’re not fusing her. : Part of the problem is that Iris doesn’t really offer anything that our existing Personas don’t, and she also mutates into Fukurokuju, who we already have. : There’s a light blue flower in the middle of the area that doesn’t do anything. : Just south of it, however, is a pretty well-hidden area with a box in it. : The Kiku-Ichimonji is already obsolete by the time we find it. It has better crit percentage, but I think we’ve physically attacked only a handful of times in this entire game thus far. : North of the flower that doesn’t do anything is this flower, who is an asshole. He’ll either take everyone’s HP to 1 or take everyone’s SP to 1 in exchange for a Revival Bead, which is absolutely not worth it. : In the elbow-shaped area is a box with a unique demon encounter in it. I forget what they’re called, and they died in one Sonic Wave so yeah. : Right before the exit to the concert area, there’s a final flower that’ll ask you which flower is the most beautiful. The correct answer is “they’re all equally beautiful” which gets you a Balm of Life. : Who builds a concert stage in the middle of a giant hedge maze?
: “Even if we lie and say we’re here for an interview, they’ll find out once they realize we don’t have an appointment.”
: “Hey, gang! There’s some guys who look like part-time staff over there. They’re slacking on the job, seems like.”
: “Yeah, looks that way. But if they’re part-timers, they might have employee badges. Why don’t we offer to buy 'em? Just say that we couldn’t get concert tix.”
: “Even if they try to gouge us a little, easier to grease some palms than start a commotion.”
: “Yeah, you’re right! Let’s try Yukki’s plan. Tatsuya-kun, will you do the honors?”
: “Do all blonde-haired people automatically speak English!? Is it weird for a blue-eyed girl to know Japanese? Am I some freak?”
: “So, so I was bullied for it as a kid, but now it’s ‘cool’? It’s ‘unique’? I’m tired of other people deciding how to define me!”
: “My dad never taught me a word of English… but everyone assumes all foreigners can speak it… they have to stand out…”
: “What am I supposed to do? I’m… I’m just like anyone else… just a normal girl…”
: “I knew it! You two are in the Masked Circle!”
: “W-well… it was so sudden…”
: “I-I had a dream! But… I lost it, so…”
: “That’s… that’s a lie. What about the shadowmen, huh!? Why is he stealing everyone’s dreaming hearts?”
: “What’s your ultimate aim in harvesting people’s dreaming hearts with those skulls!? What is this ‘End of Nahui-Ollin’!?”
: “If you want to know, I have a game for you. My duty is to ignite the flames of expiation to the lands shown by the celestial heavens. Four pillars of fire will rise..”
: “Hahahaaaa! One is here.. scour this hall to discover the next target. Somewhere here, you shall find a gracious riddle! Hahahaaa.. hyaaaahhahahahahaaaaa! Hurry, whelps! This park will soon be engulfed in flames!”
: “Maya-san!? Wh-what’s wrong!? Calm down!”
: “What the-- those burns on your hands… what in the world…?”
: “What’s with her all of a sudden!? You gotta do something, Tatsuya!”
: “I’m sorry… I’m.. I’m okay now… I’m just… so scared of his fires… Shameful, isn’t it?”
: “Thanks, Tatsuya-kun. You’re so kind… I’m okay now. Sorry about that, everyone. C’mon, we need to find the Masked Circle’s next target! Let’s see here…”
: “Twelve beasts crown the Pleiades, when the winds of change blow, all descend with smiles to the netherworld…”
: “What the hell? What is this thing getting at?”
: “Excuse me… you’re Ms. Okamura from Sevens, right? My name is Maya Amano, I’m with Coolest’s editorial division.”
: “You mentioned the Oracle of Maia just now.. do you know something about it? If you don’t mind, I’d like --”
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Look sometimes, you hear the phrase “magic cock” and just run with it.
From my own experiences in school I can say, with 100% certainty, you can go to school with someone for 7 years and still not know a damn thing about them.
I’m shocked all of this is like… not necessary, potentially? Like when you say filler I think like “aah, optional content” and that’s probably not correct on my part.
How so, if I may ask? I’m listening to it while reading the update and she’s… quite a good singer honestly? It’s also refreshing to listen to an idol that doesn’t sound like (and is!!) a child.
Atlus stop being fuckin’ weird about idols challenge! Please!
Persona 3 would beg to disagree, given one of the floor bosses can wipe you if he charms the MC pretty much effortlessly… but then that’s really the spell, that’s P3’s stupid “only control yourself” idea.
Nah, what I meant by that is that Mu and Giga Macho don’t really have much of a purpose. If this was Persona 3 onwards it’d probably just be a cutscene or two and then Aoba Park would be the dungeon.
It might be because my first exposure to it was the first Ouendan game on the DS, which used covers of all the songs. Sharpshoot was one of them, and the cover was real bad. I don’t particularly like the original either though. I think it’s one of those love it or hate it things, but there’s something about her voice that just grates on my nerves.
It might also be because I associate her song with one of the worst stages in that game.
So, in SMT 1 you could wipe bosses with Marin Karin. In fact, the strategy for Thor (the first major boss) is to Marin Karin him and have him die to his own damage. I think somewhere around SMT 2 Atlus realized that doing that was kinda overpowered. It’s the same thing that happened to Zio and Bufu: Mazio and Mabufu could lock down entire enemy groups in SMT 1 because they had a very high chance to shock or freeze. In fact, a general strategy for most of the hard fights in that game is “spam Zio or Bufu and stunlock the boss to death”.
I will admit though, I haven’t played much of P3 because the “only control yourself” system turns me off to it even more than P1’s EXP system.
Woah woah woah. Meet up with a certain party member of Persona 1? I don’t know if I can trust this game if they gotta keep dropping in Persona 1 characters as cameos to keep the plot rolling. Sarcasm.
Also ha. The writer thought they were throwing foreign words and spirituality concepts no one would know about but I can vaguely guess what they’re referring to because they used those same terms in RahXephon.
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
: 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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.. : 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.
: “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.”
: “It’s nice to meet you all. My name is Eriko Kirishima.”
: “Sorry to cut right to the point, Eriko, but that stuff I told you about…”
: “Sure. I was thinking it over on my way here.”
: “That’s amazing, Eriko! But Hirasaka is a pretty huge place… we still need to pinpoint a location.”
: “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.”
: “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…”
: “That’s okay! You’ve done more than your share! We’ll figure out the rest on our own. Grazie, Eriko-san!”
: “You’re quite welcome. I’ll stay here and ponder the Masked Circle and their riddle a little more.”
: “It’s most likely north-northeast from Sevens. The only things there are ________ and _______ in _________. So the next target is–”
: “Elly-san, please! Can you be more specific about the location? Which one is King Leo’s next target?”
: “Then.. you… you couldn’t prevent the fire… I-I’m sorry.. there’s not much more I can tell you…”
: “Thanks, Eriko. That’s more than enough to get us started. Contact us again if you figure out anything else.”
: “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 ___________!”
: “We HAVE to do this, or there’s no stopping the next bombing! Tatsuya, don’t steer us wrong this time!”
: “We need to evacuate the customers before we can go looking for the transmitter. Can I borrow your lighter, Tatsuya-kun?”
: “A roommate? Ooh.. do you have a Chinyan?”
: “Sorry to disappoint, but my roommate’s a girl.”
: “Ever since I started at Coolest, I’ve been too busy for a boyfriend. I’m pretty much married to my job!”
: “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?”
: “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.”
: “It’s strange.. when I’m with Maya-san, I’m reminded of the “Big Sis” I see in my dreams…”
: “Eikichi, those dreams–”
: “Pardon them for my sake, sweets. C’mon… can’t you forgive and forget at the request of such a beautiful specimen?”
: “P-Pervert?”
New Persona: Gullinbursti
Origin: Norway
First Appearance: Majin Tensei II (SNES)
: 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? : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. : 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. :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. : This is also where I discover that there’s a wall between this part of B1F and where Yukino is on the other side. : 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. : I stopped on the second floor’s back side to get a Maragi card, because why not. : The other side of B1F is a box maze, albeit a very simple one. : No, Tatsuya can’t simply walk between the boxes, you have to go all the way around. : 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. : 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. : Little transphobic there, lady?
: “What’s the matter, Tatsuya? Huh? That sound…”
: “How much time do we have!?”
: “Um… F-Five minutes!?”
: “How did you not notice this!?”
: “H-H-How was I supposed to know!?”
: “E-Excuse me! That transmitter in your pail… where did you find it!?”
: "That’s not a clock! It’s a timed detonator for a bomb! You need to give that to us right away!’
: “This is an emergency, so we have no choice. We’ll have to resort to force!”
: “Heyyy, everyone! The evil demon tamers are here, just like the great King Leo’s oracle said they’d be!”
: “You fiendish demon tamers who seek to destroy the world! You… uh… umm.. hm? Hold on a sec.”
: “Hey, um, Belphie? What does this say?”
: “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!”
: “YO! DEMON TAMERS! Don’t turn your back on a reincarnated warrior of the Masked Circle!”
: "Be a good girl and don’t get in our way, m’kay, sweetie? You should hurry out of here too!’
: “Did you hear that, Belphie!? This old hag is treating a magical warrior like a plain ol’ little girl!”
: “O-old hag…!?”
: “Stop that right now! If this building goes, you’ll die along with it!”
: “Psh, I don’t care. My family and classes are all just a pain… there’s nothing good about being alive!”
: “The reincarnated warrior Ixquic lives for justice, and she’ll die for it too! Only that will satisfy me!”
: “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!”
: “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.”
: “She must never have had any proper adults play with her… Don’t worry! If that ever happens, I take full responsibility.”
: “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…”
: “That would be Scorpio. In other words, head north by northeast from Seven Sisters High, so the next target is Yumezaki!”
: “Good job, Eriko! We can take it from here now that we have an idea where to go.”
: “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?”
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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
: 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. : 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. : Oh god I’m scared already. If hours upon hours of anime are right, Kansai is like the New Jersey of Japan. : To get the rumor for the sidequest, we need to pick “Not at all”. I mean, I dunno, New Jersey is pretty scary. : 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. : 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. : There’s some uninteresting garbage near where the note in the previous room was. : It doesn’t take long for us to run into the Cursed Taxi, which I kill with Atomic Destruction in one turn. : This puts Eikichi and Yukino at level 25. We are definitely a bit overlevelled now. : Before we leave, there’s a note right outside the room where that Open Door Card was. : 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. : We then need to go back to Todoroki a second time. : Same taxi, different hat. Dies in one turn to Atomic Destruction. : 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
: 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. : 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
: 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. : 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. : I had an A+ in Spanish in high school and it’s because I know that “El Dorado” is Spanish for “Pachinko”. : Here’s a horrifying thought: what if she and Eikichi had a kid? What would their hair look like? : 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- : You know, this is why I only took the bare minimum of Spanish. : 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. : 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. : Anyway, let’s go to our real destination this update: GOLD, which is an obvious reference to the Gold’s Gym chain.
: “Kinda, yeah. We’re pretty lucky Maya-san’s roommate has a membership.”
: “Looks like Ulala’s here. I should stop by the boxing ring and tell her to evacuate.”
: “Uh, about that..”
: “I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but it’s true! There’s no time! Hurry and get out of the gym!”
: “Aiyah! Isn’t that a detonator!?”
: “Like I said, there’s no time! All I can say for sure is that this organization called the Masked Circle set them!”
: “…There she goes. I hope she remembers to get out of the gym.”
: “Anyway, now that we know this is the next target, we don’t have a second to lose. Let’s find that transmitter!”
: “How considerate of you. If you behave yourself and answer our questions, this should be a short chat.”
: “Ulala! You’re still here!?”
: “I had no idea Ulala was a Persona-user!”
: “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.”
: “So then, Tatsuya. What kind of riddle did we get this time?”
: “It’s not a riddle! The next target is written here plain as day!”
: “I don’t like this at all… we’re dealing with King Leo here. Couldn’t it be another trap?”
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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
: 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.
: “We need to evacuate the children before we can start looking for the transmitter. Let’s tell the teacher and get her cooperation.”
: “Tadashi? Tamaki!? What’re you two doing up there?”
: “Witch.. you will not escape me this time! Everything is destined to perish regardless. You and these brats will be an early sacrifice!”
: “Heheh… heehee…hyahaha! Hyaaaaahahahaahhaha!”
: “Listen, everyone! We need to get all the children to the roof!”
: “I remember this place being made up of four pretty big floors… you two, find the teacher and head to the rooftop!”
: “Our job will be to check each floor’s exhibition rooms and make sure there are no kids who haven’t evacuated yet.”
: “Let’s get this done, guys! We need to search everywhere for them!”
: “Is that the cosplayer chick from the bathroom!? What’s she doing in the Zero?”
: “She’s gonna die if she stays in there much longer! What do we do, Tatsuya!?”
: “I’ll jump down and rescue her!”
: “We’ll go find a rope! You look after Maya-san, Tatsuya!”
: It’s okay.. you’re safe now. You did a great job hanging in there."
: “That asshole…! Is everyone okay!? We’d better be careful… we’ve got demons to look out for now, too!”
: “That’s frickin’ lowdown, man! This isn’t what you promised!”
: “Kehhei.. you coward!”
: “Ngh.. I’ve had enough of this! Let go of that girl!”
: “What is the End of Nahui-Ollin!? What is Joker’s real goal!? Answer me!”
: “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!?”
: “A summer day… ten years ago!?”
: “And where do you think you’re going!? There’s no escape for you!”
: “Wait! Is Joker… is Joker ‘Big Sis’!?”
: “Hurry, everyone!”
: “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.”
: “I don’t mean to be rude, babe, but shouldn’t you let someone else handle this?”
: “C’mon, that was just a little oopsie! I’ve got it now! Here goes the real deal.. blast off!”
: “A-About that… I think this thing broke! I can’t control it!”
: “Kaumena! Someone heeeeelp! I don’t want to go down in flames!”
: “You sad man… you can’t exist without blaming everything around you.”
: “The reason you can’t live a normal life is because you’re so dependant! Enough of this childishness!”
: “Sheesh… what did we do to deserve all that? I can’t believe we’re still alive!”
: “No worries! Just promise me one thing. Never throw away your life like you almost did before!”
: “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!”
: “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!”
: “Is Joker ‘big sis’? What did you mean by that?”
: “D-did I say that? You’re imagining things, Maya-san!”
: “…”
: “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?”
: “Ulala! Thank goodness you’re okay! When GOLD exploded, I thought…”
: “Huh? We’re terrorists in the Masked Circle!? And we’re wanted as the culprits behind the bombings!?”
: “Oh no.. this must be because of that rumor! The one about the five terrorists going around the city! It was about us…”
: “Wh..what the hell, man!? We put ourselves through the wringer stopping those bombings! How dare they treat us like the culprits!”
: "That’s not even the worst part! If the rumor comes true… we really will become the Masked Circle’s terrorists!’
: “This is bad… Lisa’s right. We need to think of something…”
: “I think we do have a solution. You know what they say… fight fire with fire!”
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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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