Summary
: This next part is going to largely be a rehash of Innocent Sin’s plot. If you’ve read the Innocent Sin LP, you can probably skip a lot of the plot segments.
: I also found out I made a mistake. There is actually a rumor demon quest we could’ve done on the Nichirinmaru, even on Nanjo’s route - the difference is that on Elly’s route, the reward is actually worth it.
: On Nanjo’s route, you get a sword. It’s an okay sword, but.. we’re almost to ultimate weapons and never use physical attacks anyway.
: Before we go to the Alaya Shrine, there is something very important we need to do in the Bomb Shelter. It’s in Area 5, which requires a demon rumor to access from the main room.
: Area 4 is very short, and there’s only one thing we need in Area 5. Once we have it, we never really need to go back - hence why I’m not going to grind the demon rumor.
: Something tells me Kuroki wasn’t very popular… until she was and then it turns into a generic “cute girls doing cute things” manga.
: I grab the map for Area 4 quick - it’s not that far out of the way and I figure it’s worth it in case I ever come back for any reason.
: Area 5 has a poster on the wall which unlocks one in the main room. You might ask what all this is for, and I didn’t know so I looked it up.
: If you get all of Sachiko’s letters, you can solve a thing in the end of the Bomb Shelter that gives you a legendary weapon material.. and a special reward because we played Innocent Sin.
: I grab the map and settle in for the long haul. We’re going after a rare demon that drops a material card - more specifically, we’re going to hunt down the final boss of Persona 4.
: I run into her a few seconds later. Izanami has the best healing skill in the game. It’s only available on four Personas, one of which is the final reward for that thing we did with the shrine at the start of the game. I uh, have some bad news about that, by the way.
: The guide written by the translator made it seem like you could get Fool cards basically free in Tatsuya’s Scenario Part 3. That’s.. only kinda true. You need to fight two superbosses.
: Izanami T-poses when she takes damage, which I found kinda amusing.
: I was playing this on Easy to avoid encounters, so I didn’t get hit by Diamond Dust here as hard as I probably should’ve.
: Izanami also has an instakill move, but it rarely works.
: We still need a bit of EXP to fuse Izanami, so I grind out another level on Maya.
New Persona: Izanami
Origin: Japan
First Appearance: Megami Tensei Novels
Shinto mother goddess and wife to Izanagi. Died giving birth to Hi no Kagutsuchi, and later went through a bitter divorce as a zombie.
: We need Izanami for a number of reasons. Remember how I said that we need to kill some superbosses? One of them spams dark/light-based instakills, which Izanami nulls. Heartfelt Prayer is one of the best heals in the game, and is only available on four Personas, one of which is the end reward for the shrine thing at the start of the game.
: “Ma-ya, what’s wrong?!”
: This is a flashback to this same scene in Innocent Sin, so I’ll use the shots from Innocent Sin instead to avoid honorifics. The scenes are word-for-word identical.. or would be if this game’s translation was as good as Innocent Sin’s. Eternal Punishment’s version does not identify Sudou or Maya.
: The Eternal Punishment version is kind of a downgrade, because instead of engulfing Sudou in flames, Vulcanus just tosses a little fireball at him.
: I’m also kinda curious how people who never got to play Innocent Sin took this scene in, because again, there’s no explanation of the context.
: “Deja vu again.. Amano?”
: “So… you have it too… the memory of the ‘Other Side’ is inside Maya…”
: “Ma-ya, what did you see?”
: And now, for a line that completely contradicts Tatsuya’s Scenario, and is one of the reasons Tatsuya’s Scenario is non-canon.
: “I used to bring Tatsuya here when we were little. No doubt about it.”
: Again, the only way Tatsuya’s Scenario can be canon is if Sudou came to the shrine expecting to light it on fire, killed Shiori’s brother, and then went “Nah fuck it” and left.
: Yep, it’s time for another recycled dungeon from Innocent Sin - only this time it’s even less relevant because Baofu and Katsuya were never part of the whole Masked Circle thing.
: If by some chance you are playing along, the FIRST THING YOU WANT TO DO is go to Salam and get the mapping sidequest. If you are playing the PS1 version, this is the ONLY WAY, outside of savestate abuse, to get the Fool cards you need for the shrine sidequest.
: You’ll want to do this anyway, even if you haven’t done any of the other mapping quests. Mt. Iwato is incredibly reasonable compared to some of the other dungeons, and you’ll want to explore it anyway because that’s how you get all the ultimate Personas.
: I also went ahead and fused Nodens and Ildanach. We still have Armaiti with Mediarama (since Heartfelt Prayer can’t be used outside of combat). Ildanach in particular is very nice to have because there’s a demon rumor we can pick up later on that gives him a guaranteed mutation.
: I should mention as well that there’s another sidequest in Giga Macho we could do to make a legendary weapon.. except it requires killing another metal slime with physical attacks only. Fuck that.
: My plan is to get all the other legendary weapons and then go back and do that one with savestates on an emulator.
: One thing you will definitely want to do before going to Mt. Iwato is to pack at least a few antidotes and some SP recovery items. We have to map damage floors again.
: Let’s post the map. You’ll see pretty much immediately why we need to pack antidotes.
: There’s some optional dialogue here. Going forward, I will not be showing any scenes that were in Innocent Sin - instead, I’ll tell you where in Innocent Sin they were so you can look them up in the Innocent Sin LP.
“Iwato… Alaya Shrine… those were from Mikage-cho, but this is my first visit…”
: “What should we do, Ma-ya? I kinda have a feeling… it might be better if we don’t go..”
: “Amano… are we trying to find out what we do not need to know? Is that the case.. with Tatsuya?”
: “Showing people’s pasts.. you’ve gotta be kiddin’ me…”
: The enemies here are largely the same as the Undersea Ruins, with a couple new additions. Hunab Ku is fairly easy to negotiate with and gives a decent amount of cards.
: Lucifuge is why I am playing this on Easy. He is immune to magic, and always appears with enemies who are strong against physical. I made a pact with him but got bored of constantly negotiating him away pretty quickly.
: By the way, here’s one of the reasons we want Izanami. Diamai (and its multi-target counterpart, Mediamai) are done by using Heartfelt Prayer and any healing spell. They act like the Regen spell in Final Fantasy - and in fact I think this is one of the only places in the entire Megaten franchise you ever see something like this.
: Heartfelt Prayer also unlocks the multi-target buff spells. These are AMAZING. Not only do you have a full-party permanent buff in one go, you also can use this to farm mutations.
: This is the only flashback scene I will be showing, as it is new and adds on to the ending of Persona 1.
: Elly!
: I’m amazed they mention Ayase or Mark here, given that both of them basically got deleted from the timeline.
: By the way, this scene is different if you have Elly with you.
: That’s right, she’s going to England with Jihei, who is going to marry her because she is the best girl and the objectively correct choice.
: Oh fuck! It’s Jihei with a high-def portrait!
: You know what Satomi Tadashi could’ve done that would’ve sucked a lot less? A thing where you get to play as an adult Jihei and somehow unfuck Innocent Sin’s timeline.
: “Until now, I don’t think I truly understood what it means to be number one.. the path that I will take will not be easy. Even if I know it in theory, my emotions.. the time I’ve spent with you didn’t allow…”
: “And so, I may have subconsciously wanted to escape.. from myself, Kei Nanjo… but, now it’s different. I will do what I think is right. As Kei Nanjo..”
: This is the kind of thing I’m okay with, even if it does kinda re-tread Nanjo’s plotline from Persona 1 a bit. They really, really need to do a complete re-make of Persona 1 someday, with someone competent at the helm.
: Optional dialogue time.
: “Promises huh… stupid stuff I didn’t need to see…”
: “Best friends are really great… it’s always better to have one true friend than ten ‘fake’ ones..”
: “Friendship that knows no boundaries.. it was good to have seen it.”
: Not far from where we leave the first cutscene room is a side room with the Ancient Sun in it. Unlike Innocent Sin, we don’t get the ultimate Personas handed to us at the end - we have to fuse them with material cards.
New Persona: Hyperion
Origin: Ancient Greece
Eternal Punishment Original
One of the twelve Titans born from Gaea and Uranus. Father of Helios, Selene, and Eos - representing the Sun, Moon, and Dawn, respectively.
: Hyperion is Katsuya’s ultimate Persona. His final move, which you can’t see in the shot, is “Justice Shot”, which has a 48% chance to reduce an enemy’s HP to 1.
: While he’s not terrible, Hyperion also isn’t that great. His SP costs are still sky-high and he doesn’t offer much besides Maragidyne and an all-target Nuke spell with Heat Kaiser.
: More new enemies. With a fully-buffed party, we can kill them in a single hit.
: I get a demon rumor about Super Megido - this is the last upgraded spell rumor- and it’s pointless because Succubus is level 47. By the time we leave, we’ll be able to summon up to level 66.
: This scene is a flashback to the end of Seven Sisters in Innocent Sin.
: “While we were looking for the principal who was said to be connected to the Joker… Maya appeared before us. We decided to go after Joker together…”
: “What are you talking about? Amano went to the school to investigate the ‘Joker Curse Murders’. The principal’s murder was what actually happened in his office..”
: A reality where Hanya got to live for an additional ten minutes or so before we killed him off.
: “A different.. reality!?”
: “I’m from that reality… that’s why I’m not the Tatsuya you know…! I’m just using my body from This Side… within is the me from the Other Side…!!”
: There’s some optional dialogue, but it’s the party basically going “Wait, what the shit?” so I’ll skip it.
: The Bronze Ring is a material card for Baofu’s ultimate Persona, the one he shares with Futaba.
Returning Persona: Prometheus
Origin: Ancient Greece
First Appearance: Devil Summoner
Titan whose name means “forethought”. Creator of humanity in Greek myth. Lacking gifts to give them, he gave humanity fire and the means to trick the gods, for which he was tied to a rock and had his liver eaten by an eagle. Freed by Hercules as part of his Twelve Labors.
: This is the only shot from the wiki I’m going to post, because it’s the least inaccurately translated. Prometheus has some very good moves (Zandyne, Makakaja, Thunder Baptism) and a kinda meh signature move. It makes more sense if you build Baofu as a physical character.
: As you can see, the ultimate Personas have a modified version of Grand Cross, the fusion spell between Innocent Sin’s ultimate Personas that I never used. The one thing Eternal Punishment does correctly is make it slightly less annoying to rank grind, so I might actually bother to get it this time around.
: The only non material card item in Mt. Iwato is this SP incense, which I really have no reason to use. Maya already has 750-someodd SP, and is the least likely of anyone to run out.
: From there, we reach B2F. B2F is the most annoying part of this dungeon. This floor has five holes on it, and you have to fall into each one to complete the map.
: The room below is entirely damage floors - mostly poison ones, though there’s a few SP ones and HP ones you have to step on and over to complete the map.
: Another flashback, this time to the Aerospace Museum in Innocent Sin.
: “They collected people’s hopes and dreams as energy… planning to fulfill the Oracle of Maia, the fall of humanity…”
: I feel like Satomi Tadashi is puffing up his plot a little too much, especially given that the Masked Circle thing was basically tossed out the window the second Sudou died.
: “So then.. what? Are you saying that Amano’s visions are all memories of a different reality…?”
: “Are you saying that Amano and Tatsuya Sudou came from the same reality as you!?”
: This part of the story is.. you can tell that Satomi Tadashi had one plot point in mind, and then realized it wasn’t gonna work. The original plot point was basically “If anyone but Tatsuya remembers Innocent Sin, everyone dies.” and that’s why Sudou couldn’t just be brain uploaded the way Tatsuya was.
: By the end of this dungeon, Satomi Tadashi is going to pivot hard on that.
: “So, what do you mean!? It’s not like Ma-ya came from that world either, right? Why does Ma-ya only have the memory of this ‘Other Side’? None of us have it!”
: “There are many reasons… I don’t think you should know any more…”
: Here’s a question I’d like to posit to you. Has there ever, in the history of the written word, been a work where a character is asked a question, answers with “There are many reasons..” and the end result is good writing?
: “Idiot…! As if we could back out after all this!”
: “If you continue, something bad may happen!” is pretty much the motif behind every game I have ever done an LP of.
: There’s some optional dialogue, and then something that I somehow did not realize in Innocent Sin that.. god damn, how did I not realize that?
: “The Joker was in another world as well… what exactly happened on the other side?”
: “Him? Who could he be talking about…?”
: Actually, no, I’m not. Maki was different in that she never ended the world, and also never cosplayed as Hitler. That’d be Aki’s job. She’d be Hitler Junior and make Kandori dress as Hitler.
: On the way to the next cutscene room, we find the Silver Bow, which is for Maya.
Returning Persona: Artemis
Origin: Ancient Greece
First Appearance: Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei
Goddess of the hunt, fertility, childbirth, and the moon. Also probably the patron saint of lesbians. Yes, I know that’s not how patron saints work, shut up.
: I need you to appreciate Artemis’s SMT NINE design, which has knee titties. Knee titties!
: It’s like someone saw bikini armor and went “What if we just made the armor out of breasts”? It’s brilliant, that’s what it is. Compare this to her much more boring design in this game, and SMT V where she becomes a magical girl.
: You can’t beat the tit armor. You just can’t. It’s not possible. You might ask where they got that from - there was apparently an area of Greece where that was just part of the mythology.
: I want a comic where Artemis offers Katsuya and Baofu some boob armor like that and Baofu is torn between “This looks dumb as shit” and “But wait, those stats…”
: Artemis is by far the best of the ultimate Personas, despite her weakness to physical damage. Crescent Mirror is.. I think it’s the highest damage Almighty spell in the game, second only to Megidolaon.
: And finally, an Ortyx, which is for Ulala.
New Persona: Asteria
Origin: Ancient Greece
Eternal Punishment Original
Titan who represents the stars and astrology. Turned into a quail and formed the island of Delos after flinging herself into the sea to avoid Zeus.
: Asteria is.. okay. Her signature move is this game’s equivalent of Panta Rhei. Her obvious weak point is being totally Wind-based.
: And now for something I cannot believe I didn’t realize in Innocent Sin - though admittedly, that’s because they try VERY hard to keep you from seeing it.
: This is a flashback to the cutscene at the end of Caracol. Tatsuya did not have any lines in Innocent Sin’s version of this cutscene, but in this one..
: I’d like to point out that this is the same scene where you see Maya read the Doppelganger poem, and you think “Oh, it’s because Jun is like Tatsuya’s shadow, not in the Jung sense but in the boyfriend sense” and then you realize IT’S BECAUSE HIS PORTRAIT IS A RE-DRAW OF TATSUYA’S.
: It is absolutely canon to this LP that neither Tatsuya nor Jun has noticed this, even years into their marriage, no matter how hard people try to get them to understand.
: “No… it wasn’t only Jun… Eikichi… Lisa… Big Sis Maya.. and me… all of us… we were all friends ‘playing Masked Circle’… separated by Sudou’s arson ten years ago…”
: “Big Sis Maya taught us the importance of dreams. Forever, the five of us all together… we all believed that… but, Maya had to leave town for family reasons… we couldn’t bear that, so we locked her in the shrine…”
: “And then Sudou set it aflame. We thought Maya had died, so we were scared. And each of us suppressed the memory.. Jun remembered that and became a Joker. Controlled by ‘him’, he tried to end the world in exchange for the ideal evolution.”
: That makes it sound like Innocent Sin was some kind of Dragon Ball ripoff.
: Narrator: “It was at that moment that Ulala realized she was in a rehash plot.”
: “Who is that ‘him’ that controlled Jun?”
: If they had planned this better, this could have been amazing. Imagine if IS and EP were one game, and you didn’t yet know the big reveal from Innocent Sin.. or even that Innocent Sin took place in another timeline.
: Imagine if they had tried to disguise it - have the Eternal Punishment party only visit places you didn’t visit in Innocent Sin, and then this is the point where you’d realize that you were actually going between two timelines rather than just different parts of the same city.
: “He wants to bring the same chaos to This Side as the Other Side. The New World Order is just one of his pawns.”
: “Hey, what do you mean by… causing the same thing to happen?”
: Optional dialogue.
: “The being that stands opposite to Philemon…? The archetype of existential destruction? If such a thing does exist, it is well beyond our comprehension… the shadow of mankind..”
: From here, we go through the other side of B3F to get to the exit.
: This is the final cutscene room, which is a flashback to Maya’s death scene at the end of Innocent Sin. I’m actually going to do this one in full. Why? In this game’s version of Maya’s death scene, she has no lines, and Tatsuya has them instead. What I’m going to do is combine both versions. Let’s go back to the end of Innocent Sin - thankfully, I saved all the screenshots.
: To make things easier to understand, I’ll use the old portraits from the Innocent Sin LP for the Innocent Sin lines, and Tatsuya’s EP portrait for his lines in EP.
: “Ha.. you were right that these humans may make for good test cases…”
: “What is he saying…? Philemon!?”
: “We are the sources of people’s souls… incarnations of the collective unconsciousness. Indivisible from one another.. we have watched man’s strivings for eons… I lead those with strong hearts, and the Crawling Chaos drags the weak into the abyss.”
: “All of this is to ascertain if man’s souls, riddled with contradictions as they are, can evolve into something whole. You all showed that potential. If there were more like you, man could someday reach a perfect state that understood its purpose.”
: “This.. this was all a plot by you two?”
: “Everything… this is all part of your experiment!?”
: “It’d be more accurate to just say ‘you’. The best HE can do is watch. But me.. I’m different.”
: “Big Sis Maya!!”
: “I’m trying! But.. but.. the bleeding won’t stop! Why… why aren’t my spells working!? Philemon!”
: “Nyarlathotep… this was your reason for creating the Spear of Destiny…”
: “They say that when Jesus Christ’s corpse was pierced with that spear, blood continued to spill endlessly… you humans have passed that legend down for 2,000 years. It’s one hell of a strong rumor. A fatal wound would take effect immediately.”
: " ‘Hurry up and forget about me?’.. Don’t be ridiculous!! How could I ever forget…!!?"
: I should mention that these last three lines don’t exist in Eternal Punishment’s version of this scene.
: “Yeah… I’ll grab it… you taught me… I’ll grab hold of my dream.. so…”
: The rest of the scene is exactly the same as Innocent Sin’s - it does two more lines from Nyarlathotep that are word for word identical and then cuts back to the EP cast.
: “What happened… after that…?”
: I, uh.. did Satomi Tadashi forget how the ending went? Maya Okamura didn’t need to die because Maya was already dead. You can even see her standing next to Nyarlathotep in Innocent Sin’s version of the cutscene.
: “In the world of the Collective Unconsciousness, where we fought him, strong beliefs became reality… by resetting our meeting ten years ago, we created another reality in exchange for the truths and memories until then…”
: “So that’s this reality…”
: “Maya told us to forget everything about her… to accept everything and move on… but.. we couldn’t stand it. That’s why we made this reality, to trade for our memories, and we escaped here.. hanging on to a faint hope.. to remember.”
: “A hope like that couldn’t happen.. my friends that meshed in This Side forgot about the Other Side, and each other… but.. I…”
: “So that’s why Amano and that Jun kid don’t remember about the Other Side…”
: “But, that could change… ‘he’ said that I was ‘the Paradox’… this reality exists on the concept of resetting the memories of us five…”
: Goalposts moved.
: “I don’t want Maya to be involved anymore. I’m sure you understand now… please stay out of this.”
: “What were we talking about, Serizawa?”
: “I don’t know… shouldn’t the adults be the ones fooling the kids?”
: “No.. it’s about adults taking responsibility for children’s actions..”
: Maya slaps Tatsuya twice.
: “I’m sorry… I understand.. please don’t get mad…”
: “What are you going to do…?”
: “I’m going to walk a path that I beleive in. I’ll do all I can to end the chaos in thecity..”
: Next time.. the part I’ve been dreading. We have to go back to Xibalba. Worse, I’m going to need to map it. We also have some grinding to do.
: Here’s our first Fool card. We need four of these for the reward from that shrine at the start of the game… and an accompanying piece by Salty Vanilla.
: Salam also gives us a Mediarahan card, which we can exploit the fuck out of by putting it on a Persona with very low SP costs - like a Pixie. Mediarahan always heals for full HP, regardless of the Persona’s stats, so you can cheese heals with this.