Sin is In - Persona 2: Innocent Sin

[LaZodiac]

@Timrod

: 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.

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)

[Timrod]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/727346085038784573/731732720237150288/142.PNG

Preview of what the Yukino/Anna pic is going to look like! Artist is working on it this week, and then will move on to the Tatsuya/Jun piece.

[CommanderKeene]

The MegaTen games on that list that I haven’t beaten (and thus are the most interesting to me) are If and Kyuuyaku, which are the ones you say you’re most afraid of burnout doing. Thus, I’m going to vote for Enchanted Arms, the game on the list that I know absolutely the least about. Naturally if it turns out to somehow be ill-suited to SSLPs (or at least ones in your style), that’s another thing.

[Timrod]

Click here for the update

@LaZodiac

(also do Eternal Punishment)

So, let me just do a quick post about why I won’t do Eternal Punishment until the PSP version is fan translated. I actually talked to a couple of people on /v/ (4chan’s video game board) about it this morning.

[Image Credit: Anonymous on /v/]

As it turns out, the PS1 version of Eternal Punishment DOES support save transfers from the Japanese version of Innocent Sin.. sort of. Someone dumped a debug build of EP to one of the “lost content” wikis which allows you to import an Innocent Sin save into the US version of EP. You import the save into the debug version, make a save in the debug version, and then transfer that save to a regular copy of EP. This functionality was stripped out of the official release.

[Image Credit: Anonymous on /v/]

The PS1 version of EP only takes a few things from an Innocent Sin save. Those are:

• Tatsuya’s level and stat allocation
• Tatsuya’s equipped gear (this can be taken from him and put on the other party members)
• Tatsuya’s equipped Persona

The Anonymous who posted these images also posted a copy of his Innocent Sin save, which has Tatsuya at level 56 with the best gear in the game (including an item I definitely want to try for in the LP). This means I could theoretically start Eternal Punishment with a fully-geared Tatsuya.

Here’s why I’m not doing that, unless I get overwhelming demand to do so.

First, a different Anonymous on /vr/ (4chan’s retro game board) posted that they had emailed cj_iwakura, the person translating the PSP version of EP, and were told that the EP translation is still underway and not dead. The last thing I would want is to start an LP of Eternal Punishment and then have that fan translation come out halfway through.

It’s apparently a very long process because the text is compressed and hard to work with, which is a problem people from /vr/ ran into when they tried to hack the PS1 version of Eternal Punishment to change the names of the Persona 1 cast from the Revelations: Persona names to their real ones.

[Image Credit: Anonymous on /vr/]

This is an example of that attempt. In the PS1 release, Kenta/Toro is known as “Chunky” after how they renamed him in R:P. Unfortunately, this patch was never finished or released.

The other reason I do not want to do the PS1 version of EP is that the PSP version of Eternal Punishment has.. significantly more data it takes from an imported Innocent Sin save. Unlike the PS1 release, Eternal Punishment PSP has not one but THREE scenarios in which you play as Tatsuya instead of Maya. You have to unlock them and the third one doesn’t unlock until the very end of EP. It’s not quite the size of The Answer in Persona 3, but from what I’ve heard it’s pretty close.

Among the data the PSP version uses is the choice you made in Taurus Temple (ie; whether Tatsuya is gay or not). I don’t want to talk too much about it because it kind of spoils the end of Innocent Sin.

This is the real reason I’m not doing Eternal Punishment. Doing EP without the Tatsuya scenarios is like doing Persona 3 without The Answer. Are there things wrong with the existing LP of Eternal Punishment? Hell yes there are, namely that the person who LPed it had never played Innocent Sin, because neither the fan translation nor the official one had released yet.

They also pretty clearly had not played the PSP version of Persona 1 and it physically hurts me seeing them refer to Nanjo as “Nate” and Eriko as “Ellen”.

If people really, really want me to do Eternal Punishment now, I’ll do it. Otherwise, I’m waiting until the PSP version so I can do a complete and accurate LP of it on real hardware, just as I did for the first two games.

[LaZodiac]

@Timrod

If people really, really want me to do Eternal Punishment now, I’ll do it. Otherwise, I’m waiting until the PSP version so I can do a complete and accurate LP of it on real hardware, just as I did for the first two games.

That’s 100% valid, and I can wait. I honestly hadn’t figured that much stuff was going on with EP!

[drcakey]

Oh right, you wanted to gauge interest. Here is some interest for your gauge.

Having played ~2-3 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles, I’ve decided the only way I want to experience it is making one of my friends play it for me. So that’s my comically selfish vote on that.

Other than that, I prefer newer games to older ones just because they’re more visually engaging, so that’s…pretty much everything other than Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei, I think. Regarding Enchanted Arms, I know nothing about it, but the Wikipedia page describes it as something like an SRPG/JRPG hybrid which sounds like it could be…rough to play.

Oh, I noticed you seem pretty invested in doing things on real hardware as opposed to emulating. Any particular reason for that?

[Timrod]

@drcakey

Oh, I noticed you seem pretty invested in doing things on real hardware as opposed to emulating. Any particular reason for that?

Part of it is that I already own most of the hardware. I got into it when the mini consoles first started coming out: I wanted the SNES mini but they were impossible to get, so I bought a real one instead. Then I got a Sega Saturn so I could play Policenauts and it slowly spiralled out of control until one day I found myself bidding on a consolized Neo Geo MVS.

What made me do Persona 1 and Innocent Sin on real hardware though was the LP of Shin Megami Tensei 1 on the Archive. It was done on an emulator in 2007 (pre-dating the ability to use flash memory cartridges on most retro hardware). I’ll explain some of the problems with it since I played SMT 1 myself… using Kyuuyaku as an example because I just saw a VLP of it that does the same thing.

: The first thing you do after naming the hero and heroine (Nakajima and Yumiko, by default) in Megami Tensei 1 is allocating stats. Here’s something the manual probably tells you but the game doesn’t: Nakajima can’t use magic.

: Since Intellect governs how strong your magic is, it’d be a waste to put any points into it. Right? Well, if you’re playing on an emulator and don’t mind abusing savestates, sure.

: Negotiations in Megami Tensei 1 (and continuing all the way to SMT If) are random. The only thing that influences the outcome is your Intellect and to a lesser extent your Luck stat. On an emulator, you can simply abuse savestates until you get the outcome you want, but for real hardware this isn’t possible.

: This is what you’d see in an LP done on an emulator - a completely optimal stat build where you just pump Vitality and Strength (maybe putting a few points into Speed) and never touch Intellect. On real hardware, you’d probably want at least a point or two in Intellect to make negotiations better. Doing this will open different strategies that probably would be reset-heavy or impossible otherwise.

: The LP of SMT 1 on the archive does this, and then abuses savestates to get significantly stronger than you’d be able to normally by savestating through battles with higher level demons for loads of EXP… but that’s simply not the experience you would have had if you had played it in 1992.

This is why I did Persona 1 and Persona 2 on real hardware. It’s because things like the Snow Queen grind (and having to re-do Thanatos Tower eight times) are part of what you’d experience had you played it in 1996 with a guide. That’s not to say you “cheated” or “haven’t beaten the game” if you’ve played on an emulator even with savestates or speed-up, but it’s simply not the same experience.

@LaZodiac

That’s 100% valid, and I can wait. I honestly hadn’t figured that much stuff was going on with EP!

Yeah, plus I’d definitely want the PSP version’s music to post. Like this, for instance:

Change Your Way - Persona 2 Eternal Punishment (PSP)

[drcakey]

@Timrod

The LP of SMT 1 on the archive does this, and then abuses savestates to get significantly stronger than you’d be able to normally by savestating through battles with higher level demons for loads of EXP… but that’s simply not the experience you would have had if you had played it in 1992.

I mean *sparkles with angelic purity* I wouldn’t abuse savestates. =D

[Timrod]

No update yet - still working on grinding the factory for demon rumors. As it turns out, the estoma trick becomes a lot less useful at high levels. In fact, to really get use out of it I’d have to grind to 70.

Have this, though. The artist is Eligap#5969 on Discord. I can’t link their portfolio or their twitter because they kind of do NSFW stuff on the side.

Alt without the heart.

[LaZodiac]

You can’t link their twitter but you can like, Not Link their twitter I think? Like tell us what their @ is or whatever. Because that is some slick art.

[Timrod]

I linked it on my Twitter, which should be fine. The artist’s account is @EligapNSFW and I linked it through my Twitter here: https://twitter.com/TimrodDX/status/1284100773220057089 which should be fine since the link to my tweet has no NSFW material in it whatsoever.

[Timrod]

Click Here for Update 21

: This update’s going to be on the short side, but rest assured it took me like two hours and multiple re-records to try and get all the dialog. By the end I was ready to do just about anything else but start Xibalba.

: Since I had to do Taurus Temple again, I figured I’d show off Maya’s apartment. This is where you can use the CDs you buy from Giga Macho.

: Maya’s apartment is an ungodly ruin that makes my room look clean by comparison.

: Spoilers, she’ll never clean her apartment.

: Back in Taurus Temple, we now have the fourth skull and have re-acquired the power of Gay. Trust me when I say being gay is going to be very important.

: “Hello, Maya speaking.”

: “Wh-whoa! What’s wrong, Tamaki-san? Calm down and…”

: “WHAT!? Prince Taurus took Ms. Ideal!?”

: God dammit, Tamaki. You should fucking know better.

: I should mention that while working from home last week, Youtube recommended me this video from the History Channel titled “America Unearthed: Ancient Mayans in Georgia”, starring a bunch of people willing to say that they honestly thought the Mayans built a city in Georgia before returning to South America because they needed clay or something.

: “That perv’s still alive!? What’s he want a middle-aged lady like her for !?”

: I actually laughed while watching it because it sounded like they were LARPing Innocent Sin.

: “Their destination is no doubt Xibalba. We should be able to follow them through Heaven’s Gate at Sevens… the Narurato Stone.”

: “Aiyah! That’s the secret of the Narurato Stone!?”

: I stopped by Hiiragi Psychotherapy to heal quick before making a trip to the Velvet Room. Maki’s not there. I wonder why?

: So, here’s the thing about the Abandoned Factory. Unfortunately, the part I wanted to be level 50 for (so I could abuse Estoma) doesn’t open until after you’ve gone all the way down to the bottom of Xibalba. By the time you’ve done that, the 1% encounter rate demons are horribly out of date.

: I replace Jun’s Persona with Isis. Her stats are pretty good, but more importantly this gives us a third person in the party who reflects magic. With Tatsuya being a magic tank, this means that most bosses are going to be dead easy.

New Persona: Isis

Origin: Egypt

First Appearance: Majin Tensei II (SNES)

: There’s three reasons I want Isis. First off, Cu Chulainn (which I had equipped to Jun) sucks. Second, at Rank 8 Isis learns Megidola which means we can pull off both Meltdown and God Hand in one turn. Third, look at that mutation list. Anyone who has played SMT 4 Apocalypse will know why I’d want Dagda. The mutation is apparently very rare but I’m hoping to get it.

New Persona: Mucalinda

Origin: India (Buddhism)

First Appearance: Persona 1

: In Persona 1, Mucalinda was a level 76 Persona who was absolute and utter trash. In this game, it’s slightly better in that it has at least some resistance to magic and takes 1.5x from physical as opposed to the 2x it took in Persona 1. More importantly, it has access to Megidola. I’m still going to ditch it ASAP.

: Remember way back at the start of the game when we said Principal Hanya died? This is where that choice comes into play. We don’t actually need to go through here at all and it’s not quite as great as I had hoped, but I did anyway. There’s three classrooms, one on each floor, where we can see the Persona 1 cast back in action.

: Brown takes out a pair of nazis without even trying, which is kind of incredible given that he still had Lilim equipped at the end of Snow Queen.

: See this textbox here? It’s glitched. This took me three attempts to capture properly, because it auto-advances and goes by extremely fast compared to the rest of the text in this game.

: You might ask what happens here if we said that Hanya lived. What happens is that instead of the Persona 1 characters, there’s a scene where Principal Hanya shows up and drives off the Last Battalion. It’s incredibly dumb.

: Elly takes out five nazis, which is in keeping with the fact that she had the best ultimate Persona in the first game and the only one worth using.

: No, GOLD was that gym that blew up even though the party defused all the bombs.

: Getting all these optional scenes sucks because the hallways are full of Last Battalion who like using instakills.

: Why they didn’t put Yukino here, I don’t know. It would’ve been nice to see her and Ms. Saeko again. At least we know what Yukino and Anna are doing right now (just look up above this update if you haven’t yet).

: You’ll notice that two of the remaining Persona 1 cast haven’t shown up here, those being Reiji and Nanjo. The wiki insists they’re here somewhere but I did a complete search of the building and did not find them.

: Oh, right! I found out that Xibalba is an actual thing in Mayan folklore - it’s the underworld that serves as the land of the dead. Supposedly, there’s a cave that goes there in.. I think Colombia.

: “He said that underneath Sevens is the Silver River after it breaks off from Tanabata River.. and that the Heaven’s Gate that led to the underground Silver River.. it was supposed to be this Narurato Stone.”

: Just like the end of Snow Queen, we take a pillar of light to the final dungeon.

: “The walls are shining… the Silver River is a pretty appropriate name for it.”

: “If we go down this river, we should come out at the entrance to Xibalba.”

: “One of their boats is over here. Question is, who’s going to pilot it?”

: Starring Danny DeVito as Eikichi “Michel” Mishina.

: Have I mentioned that in Eternal Punishment, it’s revealed that Maya has totalled like three cars?

: Maya manages to hit every single rock in the river while doing donuts.

: I thought Kasugayama High was the worst dungeon. I was wrong. This is.

: Silver River is an autoscrolling stage that lasts anywhere from about thirty minutes to the better part of an hour.

: There are encounters every two seconds, but in a lot of cases the enemies are worth negotiating with.

: Vucub-Caquix is definitely worth making a pact with. They give out the smallest number of cards (less than any of the demons in the Zodiac temples) but give you a Garudyne Card if you negotiate with them and ask for an item.

: Manbannannan gives out 50 free cards per negotiation, and is definitely worth making a pact with once you’ve gotten a few Garudyne cards.

: The correct answer is go straight, because it puts us on the shortest path. I hit “go right” because I’m a dumbass and thought I might grind for some more cards.

: Hunab Ku is another demon definitely worth making a pact with because it gives out Magnadyne Cards.

: Succubus is one of the reasons I regret going through the longer route. They’re highly resistant to magic and just generally suck to deal with, plus their negotiations are not consistent.

: Lucifuge, however, is the reason you do not want to be in this garbage dungeon for even a second. He’s going to be in pretty much every encounter and is completely immune to magic. There’s only one thing that can make him fuck off.. the power of Gay.

: Pucel just kind of exists and gets mowed down by Meltdown.

: Yet another reason not to stick around is Seker (the birds in the back behind Yaksa). Seker likes to use instakill spells and tends to go before the party does. Basically, Silver River sucks and you want to spend as little time as possible in it.

: Unfortunately, this section also has auto-scrolling text. The line before this is Lisa going “Aiyaahhh, I’m bored, can’t we be done with this already?” If this dungeon wasn’t a giant piece of shit I’d re-record it.

: Next time, we go into Xibalba. Now would also be a good time to mention that the Tatsuya/Jun commission is officially underway and should be done for the end of the LP. If you haven’t seen the Anna/Yukino one, it’s above this post.

[LaZodiac]

The Silver River seems utterly miserable. As for not finding Nanjo and Reiji… looking at their art, it might just have been you didn’t notice them because they’re the two that look the most different? It might also be that you needed to find them in the factory first before they show up at Sevens? That’s as much information as I can find, at least.

also speaking of SMT, Nocturne is getting an HD remaster on the Switch next year.

[Timrod]

Oh, I know where they are. Reiji is in a room in the factory we can’t get to yet. It only opens up after you’ve done the first half of Xibalba and requires a bunch of demon rumors to open. Nanjo I think shows up at the same time for one brief scene. I’ll get to it in the update after the next one.

I’ve already heard about the Nocturne remaster and SMT V next year. I’m probably going to do SMT V shortly after it releases, because for once I’d like to do an SMT game without Japan spoiling everything over a year in advance. I’m sure Atlus won’t enjoy that, but the only way they’ll get me to stop is if they were to, say, release an English version of the PSP version of Eternal Punishment.

[LaZodiac]

Aah, okay.

Also hey apparently SMT5 is going to have a simultaneous release worldwide, so that might not happen this time around!

[Timrod]

Hey, so uh.. have the other commission I ordered. It’s done!

[LaZodiac]

This is the best LP now.

[Timrod]

Click here for Update 22

: This is it. The endgame. Welcome to Xibalba. I hope you’re ready for what’s basically Caracol 2.0.

: “That’s odd, though. They know we’re after them… so isn’t it a little too quiet? There’s not even a welcoming committee here.”

: “This spaceship can carry an entire city, so I bet it has tons of high-tech traps. Everyone probably fell for them…”

: “Hmm… I doubt they ALL died, but you’re right, there must be some pretty devious traps in there.”

: It doesn’t really matter which one you pick. All that changes is the next cutscene, which I would do both versions of were it not locked behind a godawful 45 minute long autoscroller.

: “Whatever it is, we can’t just stand here. We need to get the Heaven Skull so we can put the city back to normal. Let’s go!”

: You can’t see it because of how blurry the screen gets when stuff’s in motion and also because it’s under Eikichi’s portrait, but Lisa is dancing around the lasers trying not to get hit.

: Xibalba is easily the second worst dungeon in the game after Silver River. The floors aren’t particularly long or complex - but in exchange, the encounter rate is jacked up to the point where in some cases you’re getting encounters every other step.

: Layout wise, it’s pretty much exactly like Caracol - there’s a hallway then a cutscene room, and this repeats until it’s over.

: “Eheheh.. I’ll show you some stars, too. Papa knows lots about the stars!”

: “Wow, that’s so cool! My daddy’s always busy with his job. Hey, Jun! What’s your daddy like?”

: “Huh? Um.. well.. h-he’s really cool and strong and great… really!”

: “Seriously…? I don’t have a dad, so I’m kinda jealous… you’re so lucky, Jun-kun!”

: I wonder who Jun’s mother could be? The game will only barely explain it shortly before the final boss in a cutscene room, because Innocent Sin has some serious pacing issues. It feels like there should’ve been another dungeon between Mt. Iwato and Mt. Katatsumuri where they put some of this stuff.

: “D-don’t worry about those k-kids.. they say even m-meaner stuff to m-me…”

: “My papa.. he’s… he’s not a deadbeat!”

: Honestly, why ARE we seeing this? The entire childhood plot arc was like five dungeons ago.

: “Jun-kun!? Are you okay…? Hang in there!”

: “I’m… I’m all right… sorry, everyone. Let’s.. keep going…”

: There’s some optional dialogue here which I feel I need to show so that something about two updates from now when I finish the game makes sense.

: Can you guess what the final boss is going to be?

: The monsters here are largely the exact same ones we saw in Silver River, with Throne and Fafnir (a Catoblepas recolor I didn’t even realize was a separate demon until I was nearing the 5th floor) being the only new demons. I fought every random encounter in this dungeon without negotiating at all and barely gained a level out of it. Just use the Estoma card.

: Oh, Pascal the Dog is here as well. He’s worth exactly jack shit in terms of EXP and money and only usually appears by himself.

: Xibalba doesn’t have staircases, it has future space elevators. Most of this dungeon is laid out as follows, to the point where I’m not even going to post the map.

: There’s a hallway, a couple of small side hallways with items in them, a cutscene room or two, and then the elevator. That’s it.

: I should mention that around here, I decided to use all the incenses I picked up.

: The reason Tatsuya only has 80 dexterity instead of 99 is because each character’s stats are the average of theirs and their Persona’s.

: The big one here was Maya, who gained about 90 HP from using all the Vit and HP incenses. She’s still got the lowest max HP of anyone.

: I’m just going to summarize the rest of this because it’s about ten more lines that do nothing but tell you that Prince Taurus had his face blown off by a laser.

: Ares is an enemy that showed up in Silver River that I’m not sure I actually got a shot of. Annoyingly, I wound up using God Hand and a shitty water fusion spell for most of this dungeon because Mucalinda (Eikichi’s Persona) wouldn’t fucking mutate. Eventually it learned Malaquadyne so I could do Meltdown and Undine on the same turn.

: Does anyone want to guess what’s in this next cutscene room? Anyone?

: Most people think the microwave hallway in Metal Gear Solid 4 originated there, but it actually had a long and storied career before that.

: All Solid Snake really had to do to make it through the microwave hallway was to believe in himself.

: It’s because, as we’re about to learn, Maya is basically a six year old girl in an adult’s body.

: By the way, I started looking at stuff for my next LP and found a design document from one of the artbooks for Devil Survivor. The notes for all of them are basically “Giant breasts, needs bigger breasts, big breasts.”

: The door opens because the Mayans fucking suck at building traps. It explains why they’re hot garbage in Civ 6 and why the Inca are the superior South American civilization. Seriously I feel like if the Spanish had just left the Inca alone we’d already have a functioning space elevator. Those guys built roads over mountains, it would’ve been a matter of years before they built one to space.

: Right outside the microwave hallway we run into the worst enemies in this dungeon. Hellsehen (and the robots, called Metal Zentaurs) are extremely resistant to magic. Worse, they like to spam both poison and confusion to fuck up fusion spells. You basically need either Take-Mikazuchi or a Persona with Maziodyne to kill them.

: Seriously this feels like it’s some kind of Mayan temple to daddy issues.

: So, this is Maya’s dad. He has a name that as far as I know is only mentioned in the artbooks - it’s Masataka Amano. Remember how I hated Fujii or whatever his name was, the photographer who died outside Caracol? That’s because in Eternal Punishment, we find out that he worked with Maya’s dad.

: Keep in mind that Maya is 23, and I think in this scene she’s 6 or 7 years old, meaning that Yukino is still a toddler. Fujii is working with him at this point. Yes, he’s old enough to be Yukino’s father and then some.

: “Is it more important than me or Mom!? That’s… so selfish, Daddy!”

: “Liar! You promised… you promised you’d come home.. when you were assigned to the war zone… do you know how scared I was!? That Daddy might have forgotten about me…!?”

: I like that Atlus went through all the trouble of making what I’m pretty sure is a new portrait for this specific scene. And now we know why she has the rabbit. You know, the one we haven’t seen since the bomb shelter.

: So I’m gonna level with you here, I don’t like the writing for this last part of the game at all. The problem is that the plot kind of didn’t have enough time for actual character development (even though it did) and so what we have is the game throwing a giant mess of plot at us and hoping something’s going to stick.

: I mean, just thinking about, it we basically went from knowing nothing at all to “Hitler has returned and is using his army of possibly robo-Nazis to raise a Mayan spaceship from the ground so he can take over the world” and then back to nothing.

: I think part of it is that up until this point, Atlus was pretty much used to making games that just didn’t have a plot. Persona 1 was, as far as I know, their first attempt at actual writing as opposed to making a dungeon crawler and telling you “there’s demons, kill them all”.

: So I’ll just warn you now, a lot of the stuff at the end of the game will make exactly zero sense if you assume Jun is gay and has no romantic interest in Maya.

: “I went into the same line of work as my dad… maybe I was trying to outdo him..”

: “Dad died pursuing his dream. All he left me was this.. that’s why I… I wanted to be a successful journalist who could balance my work with a family, the way he couldn’t…”

: “Have you… ever heard this poem before?”

: As far as I know, unlike Der Doppelganger, this is not an actual poem. At least, the only results when I searched for it were P2 fansites.

: “What does it take to prove you were ever alive…? Even if you die, as long as you’re remembered, you’ll live on as a memory.”

: Why the fuck are we going into this NOW!? This is the end of the goddamn game! We’re supposed to be wrapping the plot up, not adding new plot points!

: “But then, if you’re forgotten… that’s really no different from being dead..”

: “No man is an island… so we try to imprint our existence in others. Following one’s dream may be one way of doing so.”

: Hold on I need to contact that artist again and get a picture of Jun as Venom Snake doing the “You’re all diamonds” thing.

: “That’s how it was with me. If you guys had really forgotten about me… I might not be here right now..”

: The way he calls her Big Maya just reinforces the whole Metal Gear Solid thing.

: I’m imagining this as an ad for a fast food restaurant and it’s incredibly amusing. “This.. is where my Persona has been guiding me for the last ten years… to Big Jack’s Burger Shack, just five minutes off Exit 39 of I-91. Big Jack’s, where we’ve got the best burgers allowed by state law!”

: I didn’t capture it because it happened in the same battle, but Isis also got a “change form” mutation. I was like “FUCK YES I GOT DAGDA”. Nope, this game hates me.

: Instead, we get the ability to change Isis into King Arthur, who.. sucks. Weak to magic across the board, doesn’t even null physical attacks, shit moveset, high SP cost. I think he might actually be the worst Persona in the game, on par with some of the shittier Personas from the first game.

: “You’ve got a point. We haven’t seen Igor’s face in a while, either. I kinda wish we could have a chance to switch out some of our Personas..”

: Yes, I too want to send Mucalinda into the trash pile for being shit and refusing to learn High Pressure.

: “We’re in a real fix… there’s no time to go back to the city and no way to get there if we could. Just hang in there, guys.”

: “No use hoping for a miracle. Let’s just go.”

: “Aiyah! We’re so lucky! Let’s go, Tatsuya!”

: “Oh goddess of destiny, thank you! Thank you! Let’s break on through!”

: “Wait a second, you two…! Doesn’t this seem a little too good to be true!?”

: “Yikes..”

: “Oh man, this has to be some kind of trap! We need to hurry after them! I’ll go after Eikichi-kun. Tatsuya-kun, you and Jun-kun follow Lisa!”

: “Big Maya’s right, I think. Let’s go, Tatsuya!”

: Honestly, I don’t know what the point of this cutscene is. It’s not really advancing character development, because we already know that Eikichi is a complete dumbass who will gladly run face-first into any trap he sees. It’s also not a plot point in the sense that we’re not splitting the party up again.

: “Aiyah!? Where did you two come from? I don’t remember seeing you inside.”

: “We wanted to ask you the same thing… what happened in there, Lisa?”

: “Whaaaat!? Nuh-uh. It really was just a healing spring inside. I know, because I was yelling at Trish about what a ripoff her prices were. Maybe you two were just dreaming.”

: The trap was actually just trying to make Tatsuya and Jun hug.

: “Well, I definitely came out of the Velvet–”

: “Hang on… what’s going on here? When I was in there, it was full of traps… should we go back in and look again?”

: Given how Persona 1 worked, you’d think there would be a different route through the dungeon if you actually tried to go into the Velvet Room, but nope, it’s just a Velvet Room.

: The fifth floor has an elevator on it, but Jun refuses to let us use it. This is where I got really confused because there’s supposed to be a way back to the city from here.

: What this is probably supposed to be, given that the name of the room is “Terminal”, is a Nazi-developed version of the teleportation terminals from the mainline SMT games.

: Eikichi then proceeds to star in Shin Megami Tensei III, where he is merged with a demon and becomes the “Dummy-fiend”, a creature of pure stupidity.

: “E-Eikichi-kun!”

: Honestly though, you’d think there’d be at least some Nazi body parts strewn around here. How would you know when the last person to use the teleporter is off the pad on the other side?

: Somehow, Lisa fails at using a Terminal.

: And now we’re back at Sevens. The game does this ostensibly because there’s new armor and weapons we can buy, but now we can do the “ultimate weapons” sidequest.. which I’m not going to do for the most part. For one thing, I never actually wound up buying new armor since uh.. I think after Mt. Iwato.

: Between this and restocking on healing items I was down to around 500k yen.

: We were kind of supposed to do Doors 4 and 5 of the Abandoned Factory a long time ago - I think Door 4 opens after the Aerospace Museum and Door 5 opens after Mt. Katatsumuri.

: The process for opening up the two hidden rooms in the Factory is extremely annoying. Before you can do any of it, you need to have read all of the notes in the first five rooms.

: So now we finally find out what happened here: someone started a rumor that made demons appear. We find out exactly what the deal is (and why there are two hidden rooms) in Room 5.

: This is where we get the clues about the hidden rooms - the liquid waste disposal area and the secret boardroom. Here’s the annoying part. Instead of this just being a rumor you can take to Todoroki, you have to spread it via demons.

: There’s one final note we need to get, which is done by going through Room 1 and going into Room 5 from there. It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.

: Room 6 has a Crimson Wing in a locker, which allows us to fuse Suzaku. This is only really relevant if you’re trying for that one fusion spell.

: So basically, here’s how demon rumors work. You have to make a pact with a demon, make it happy again, ask it for information until it gives you the rumor you want, and then use a different demon to spread it.

: In the Boardroom, we run into someone who looks… kinda familiar.

: What he’s really asking here is “Do you want Tatsuya’s ultimate weapon for free?” and the answer is yes.

: So in the past three years, Nanjo became a biker. This has to do with his story in Eternal Punishment.

: In Eternal Punishment, Nanjo’s entire storyline is based around a rumor that Kandori somehow survived Persona 1 and is in Sumaru City.

: So here’s why the ultimate weapons aren’t worth it. Right now, we could go buy a weapon from the store that has 143 attack. The ultimates can be powered up through demon rumors, but… yeah, no. The other problem is that if you screw up a negotiation, the demon can curse your weapon and render it useless (1 attack). Next time, we’ll finish the factory and finish the game.

[LaZodiac]

Aah, there we go. I was wondering when Mr Number One would show up, because I read he did show up at the school to, but I guess not.

It’s a shame the legendary weapons are so… volatile.

[Timrod]

My guess is that in the manga (which I haven’t read) he probably does show up at the school, but doesn’t in the game because I feel like they had no idea what the plot was going to be until it was too late.