SIN'S BACK IN: Let's Play PERSONA 2 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT (PSP)

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we switch back to Normal difficulty, I need to grind for cards. Making all those sources kind of ate away at the leftover card stash from Innocent Sin.

: First up on the new Persona list is Tensen Nyannyan, who I think I logged in Innocent Sin. Tensen Nyannyan is one of the first Personas to learn Mediarama.

: While grinding, I get the rumor from Robin Goodfellow about the shortcut to Area 2 of the bomb shelter.

: Just like the rumor from Club Zodiac, we have to first get it, and then form a pact with Minotaur to get him to break the rock.

: You can definitely see the influence of the people behind Nocturne here. The shortcut to Area 2 has an unavoidable damage floor directly in front of it that has a pretty decent chance to poison.

: Next, I fuse Gullinbursti for Maya.

New Persona: Gullinbursti

Origin: Norse Myth

First Appearance: Maijn Tensei II (SNES)

Boar belonging to Freyr, made to run through air and water. Also glows, because do you really think a Norse god is gonna drift a boar without headlights?

: Gullinbursti is important because he is extremely resistant to physical attacks and conveys an extra Vitality every level. This will fix Maya’s low HP and low physical defense.

: Sakya fucking rules. He’s about as close as Eternal Punishment gets to Persona 1’s version of Lilim. Even better, he has Best compatibility with Nanjo, so we might be able to mutate him.

New Persona: Culebre

Origin: Spain

First Appearance: Devil Summoner

Mythical Spanish dragon born in underground rivers that rarely moves and spends most of its time guarding treasures.

: Culebre is another one of those Personas I only really pick because I want what it mutates into, which is actually the same thing Sakya mutates into. I’d rather lose Culebre than Sakya.

: With this, we should be ready for the sewer, even if we’re a little heavy on Earth and Water Personas. I fused a third Marduk for Baofu offscreen, meaning we’ve spent over 200 cards on Marduks.

: Before we leave, we want to grab the mission to map out the science lab from Salam. You have to do this before you leave. The sewer (thankfully) does not count.

: “A distinctive feature is the maze setting. On top of that, at each block, a flood of water comes through at timed intervals.”

: “There are two routes connecting the blocks… if we don’t take the shorter way, we have a higher chance of getting washed away.”

: “We must control the locks for the two paths by the 1st and 2nd Control Rooms respectively. Thus, two people must stay…”

: “You really did your homework…”

: I like to think that Tatsuzou went to Nanjo’s dad and straight up went “Hi, I need a sewage plant to use as my evil base for taking over the world because I’m crazy” and Nanjo’s dad handed him a check.

: “Sometimes adults don’t make sense… are you cool with that?”

: “A world of facades and concessions is a cold one indeed… I just walk the path I believe in.”

: I also like to think that at some point during this dungeon, Baofu goes up to Nanjo and goes “Hi, I need ten million dollars to build a larger hacker bunker” and Nanjo immediately writes the check.

: “Perfect… so, who’s staying?”

: Oh fuck, it’s Reiji! They should have put him in while Sudou was still alive, because it’d be funny as hell to see Sudou complaining about “MY FUCKIN’ DAD” and Reiji just kinda nodding in agreement.

: This line is most likely inaccurate, since I think the “six-pack” thing was purely an addition by the Revelations: Persona “translators”.

: Elly sent Maki here because Maki was less likely to hurt someone when she randomly whips out a gun and starts blasting. Yes, that was a thing in Persona 1… in case you forgot.

: Here’s my question - why is Nanjo in the party, and not Reiji? Reiji’s entire life goal is murdering Kandori, and if Kandori is still alive his job is not done.

: There should’ve been a line where Reiji goes “Nah, fuck that, kill his bitch ass. I’ll help.”

: “All right… I’ll try.”

: “I leave the releasing of the locks to them… we can contact them with that walkie-talkie. When you decide between routes A and B, give them a call.”

: Now it’s time to talk about how the sewers work. There are three segments, and each segment has a 10-minute time limit. At the end of the time limit, the water comes and pushes you back.

: There is no limit as to how many times you can go through each section, if you’re doing something like hunting for the Tsuchinoko.

: Here’s the map. The suggested route is to take either door for the first section, and then do Route B for the rest of the dungeon as it has more items.

: This is why the sewers don’t count for the mapping sidequest - you can’t actually see the entire sewer because it’s one-way and you’ll always miss out on half of it. There’s also some optional dialogue.

: Eat shit, Katsuya.

: Reiji is already married by this point, and I’m pretty sure Lisa would have first dibs given the whole weird staring match she had with him in Innocent Sin.

: I pick the A route to start, because it’s shorter and more straightforward than the B route and has the same items.

: It’s nothing good, and honestly I could’ve just ignored it all. I could also skip Reiji’s dialog for opening the door, but it’s actually pretty good.

: Why do I have a feeling that if this was Innocent Sin, Lisa would’ve done exactly the same thing?

: Route B2 can be completed in about twenty seconds if you simply walk in a straight line. However, there’s a couple of platforms south of the exit with items.

: There’s another Damascus Steel, which we can take to Padparacha to get made into a weapon.

: There’s also a weapon for Baofu and a Luck Incense, which I immediately give to Maya.

: And on the way back, 20 Free Cards. You might ask what the fights are like here, and, well…

: For the most part, they’re exactly the same as Aoba Park. The only difference is that Kanaloa and Kraken are here and the enemies tend to come in larger groups.

: Kanaloa is particularly annoying because it has a physical skill with a chance of instantly killing. For reference, Kanaloa is the blue one.

: I did, by the way, make an effort to find the Tsuchinoko and did not find it. I don’t even know what the item you get from it does, and I don’t feel like grinding to find out… especially not after what’s coming up.

: By the way, I recommend leaving the game on Easy mode here and running away from battles, because you’ll occasionally get forced negotations which eat up a lot of time.

: We reach the second checkpoint. There’s some optional dialog with Nanjo here that fills in a couple of holes after Persona 1.

: “The system Kandori made… the DEVA system… as well as his other research, could be of incredible benefit, you know…”

: Yeah, benefits like being re-used by the Persona 5 Royal writers. Great job there, Nanjo.

: “So, that’s how we teamed with Tatsuzou. Before we knew of the New World Order, we unwittingly helped them… it’s a foolish story… when I think of all the feelings of those who were involved, there’s no way I could ever make it up…”

: Who is this guy, and what has he done with Reiji? This almost sounds like he’s Nanjo’s boyfriend or something. I mean, admittedly we don’t know that Nanjo isn’t gay.

: The next area is a long hallway where half the chests are traps or have forced battles, and the other half have some pretty okay items. The Pipe Fox boosts Magic Attack by 10. It goes right on Maya.

: This sword is a slight upgrade for Nanjo and has a chance to shock on hit.

: “If we don’t render that inoperable, I can’t ensure you of our freedom to move.”

: “Hey, they’ve got guns… does your company supply the guards with firearms!?”

: Somewhere in the Nanjo Group’s headquarters, Tatsuzou Sudou approaches Nanjo’s dad. “Hey, uh, I need several dozen crates of illegal guns. You know, to take over the world. Because I’m crazy.”

: Nanjo’s dad hands him a check immediately.

: “That is absurd… even my group’s scientists aren’t allowed entry in here. Those aren’t our security officers, either.”

: You just know that Maya is thinking “I wonder if I could get Nanjo to write me a check for a warehouse full of crab meat, or my own crab fishing company, or maybe a cleaner.”

: “Then we don’t need to hold back…”

: “We shouldn’t make any sounds…”

: “Whaddya mean by that!?”

: This is probably what happens in every dungeon in Persona 5 after Makoto joins, behind the scenes. Joker: “Here we go, Ann and Ryuji. You can be plot-relevant again next time.”

: “Mmmm…”

: Ulala’s like “That guy is absolutely fucking dead, and… oh, that’s what he meant.”

: Oh hell yeah, it’s Eikichi! Unfortunately, Satomi Tadashi screwed him out of plot relevance to the point where as far as I know he doesn’t have his Persona in this game.

: “Dammit! Release Sugimoto, NOW…!!! If ya don’t, I’m gonna beat your ass!!!”

: Sugimoto was the guy that Sudou set on fire on Kasugayama High’s rooftop.

: “But that’s pretty hasty… weren’t YOU the target of the Joker curse in the first place?”

: “I neutralized security… we should be able to bypass the security devices for a while.”

: “Eikichi-kun, leave your friend to us and go home… this is not a place for kids.”

: “Don’t kid me! I’m not gonna just pull back! Take me too! If ya don’t, I’ll make a ruckus…!? SOMEBODY ---- !!”

: “Very well… let’s take him with us. I can understand his position. But in return… refrain from getting in our way. When we say come back, come back.”

: I’m going to start this dungeon out by saying that if you ever play this yourself, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, DO THE MAPPING SIDEQUEST. Also, have some optional dialogue.

: Katsuya is such a cop it hurts.

: One thing I feel like the original translator did very poorly was making Eikichi feel like Eikichi. This feels like a different character from the Eikichi we knew in Innocent Sin.

: Let’s talk about the map sidequest, because there really isn’t much to this dungeon if you’re not doing it. You see those dark squares on the minimap? We need the whole map to look like that.

: The annoying thing is that the game only counts tiles within a one-tile radius of Maya as “mapped”, and a lot of hallways are three tiles wide.

: Right down the first hallway is a Velvet Room and Trish’s Fountain, so I go in there for optional dialogue.

: “Huh? Why am I able to use Personas…? That’s what I’d like to know… though I might’ve played that game when I was a kid.”

: He was also hit with a Persona-producing arrow by an old lady from the Middle East. It was like a nerf dart and bounced off, so he didn’t notice.

: “I have used this place quite often. Personas are useful not only in fighting, but in normal social settings as well.”

: “My friend, who became a salesman, uses his power to succeed in his career. Now if only Kido were that clever…”

: Nanjo clearly didn’t read the part of Jung where the Persona is a key piece of the psyche and everyone has one because you need it to exist. Or to protect you from jangly key men. One of those.

: “Come to think of it, back in high school I learned Persona from you and played it… I wonder if it has anything to do with this?”

: The lab is filled with new enemies, including Taranis, who is probably the least annoying one next to the humans. Taranis is weak to Water, and we’ve got plenty of that.

: All routes leading out of the starting area are blocked by these shutters. I should post the map while I’m at it so you can see.

: This is where this dungeon starts to suck. Cwn Annwn has an instant death attack that it uses at random, which as far as I know always works and can’t be avoided.

: The first thing I did was form a pact with them specifically to stop this bullshit from happening. We still don’t have Mediarama on Tensen Nyannyan yet, so I have to switch Maya to Iris every time I want to heal.

: There’s a set of stairs near the Velvet Room that comes out pretty much right here. This is a cutscene room, and we need to see it before we can move on.

: I like to think this is Joker’s origin story in Persona 5. He came out of a lab trying to do boyfriend experiments. It’s about as canon as this room is, which is to say it’s not.

: “Uh…!? What… what happened to this person?!”

: This is Satomi Tadashi trying to do worldbuilding. It will never come up again, and is non-canon.

: “There’s another one over here… on their necks… looks like an electrode…”

: “Human experiments… how horrific and deplorable…!”

: “Calm down, young man. We will locate your friend. You escort these people here to the trailer in the parking facility.”

: “What do you plan to do, Nanjo-kun?”

: “Treat them at our hospital… I figured out… what they do here. I can’t turn the other way.”

: I’m surprised the answer isn’t “bring them upstairs to Igor”, but whatever.

: “Can you bring them back?”

: “We won’t know if we don’t try… it’s still a hundred times better than doing nothing…”

: On the other side of the basement is this guy, who is how we make progress.

: “An employee… hey, we came to find out what’s going on in this laboratory. Can you give us the details?”

: “Understood. Leave the rest to us.”

: I spend a few minutes running around to fill in map squares. There’s a lot of pointless space in the basement.

: Anyway, here’s where I fucked up. To finish the map, you need a demon rumor. The demon that drops the rumor only spawns in the basement and on the first floor. Only one guide mentions this.

: After how much shit I went through trying to get the one in Club Zodiac, it’s safe to say I am not doing that again without an emulator.

: Past that door is a switch that allows you to open either “A” doors or “B” doors. There’s an “A” door blocking an item near the start of the dungeon, so you have to backtrack for map completion.

: Note that because of the tiny mapping radius, I have to run all the way around this pointless room after getting the item.

: This part, right after the first A/B switch, is where I was about ready to shut off the PSP. I’d like you to notice something. See how we’re right in front of a damage floor, but it’s not on the map, even though it’s very clearly within the one-tile mapping range?

: This one I ran all the way around, and there’s unfilled map squares where the damage floor is. Yes, this means we have to run over each and every fucking damage floor to complete the map. It gets worse.

: The damage floor room has an A/B switch, and a staircase in the south that will lead you in a route to this guy on the other side of this Level 2 shutter. However…

: This is the room directly above the room with the red damage floors. These are blue damage floors - which, if you’ll recall, drain SP. They don’t drain it from Maya, and that’s to prevent a softlock.

: Yep, we’ve got to run over all of those fucking damage floors. Everyone now has 1 SP except for Maya, and I had next to no SP restoration items.

: Now, you might say, “Why not go to Easy mode and run around to restore SP, since Easy increases the amount of SP restored per step?” Here’s why.

: This floor has Principality on it. Principality has Mahama, which targets everyone and can potentially wipe your party if you are unlucky.

: Principality is level 29, and even after all the grinding I did, we are only around level 27. This means no pact, which means we have to negotiate him away each time for no benefit.

: I’m gonna say it outright, the mapping sidequest sucks. The encounter rate here is very high, and given the amount of bullshit you have to go through, it’s simply not worth doing.

: And here’s the final kick in the dick. I actually went past the spot I was supposed to go to make progress and went to outside the boss room.

: The last mappable squares require you to use the elevator. There’s a fuse box next to it. It’s locked, and the keycards don’t work on it.

: What you have to do is go down to the first floor and fight one of these things, which I forgot to take a shot of:

: They’re called Kabandha, and are annoying because they can hit Katsuya’s water weakness. You have to get the rumor from them that Rasputin has the key to the fuse box.

: The rest of this dungeon consists of going to the floor with the red damage floors, flipping the A/B switch to B, and then using the side staircase to get to the second scientist.

: We now have everything we need to get to the boss room, and can take a shortcut there.

: We’ll do the boss next time, mostly because I might load the game back into the emulator and see if I can’t get that demon rumor.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Well, let’s get back into this and see how egregious the grind for the demon rumor is. First order of business is to set the game back to Easy for the guaranteed escapes from battle.

: Kabandha only spawns in the basement of the lab - at least, as far as I can tell - and so I spend the better part of an hour running around in circles in this room near the stairs.

: It takes me something like 10 negotiations after forming a pact to get the rumor, which sounds not that bad, but Kabandha is a relatively rare spawn.

: By the time this dungeon is over, I amassed nearly 400 free tarot cards from forced negotiations with Cwn Annwn.

: We now have the Fuse Box Key, which allows us to power the elevator and go to the one area we haven’t mapped yet.

: The Maragion card would be useful for the upcoming boss, but we don’t really need it. There’s one other useless skill card down here.

: Totally worth all the grinding. Now, I do happen to know that the game will tell you when you’ve finished the map - and we still don’t have that notification. Why, you ask?

: That’s because there’s a big, pointless room outside the boss door.

: You know, it’s funny sometimes how Salty Vanilla knows this game better than I do. In that pic they did of Baofu and Futaba I think they originally had Baofu using a laptop.

: “This is…!?”

: " ‘Experiments on separating the Joker from its user’… ‘Theory on spinal nerve transplants for two-legged organisms…’ "

: " ‘Separating’ the Jokers…? For what reason!?"

: “Just one moment… it says the research it’s based on exists.”

: Wait a second, isn’t that just the “Currently existing technology” line from Metal Gear Solid 1?

: “…We can’t read it all now. I’m gonna save the entire thing on a hard drive. I’m crashing the original data.”

: This is very, very close to being that cutscene from Final Fantasy 7 with Jenova’s holding tank.

: Kandori, now with sunglasses.

: I think this is probably a holdover from Revelations: Persona. Kandori never wanted to destroy the world - his initial plan was to sell the DEVA system. The whole Maki thing was an accident.

: Maki was the one who wanted to destroy the world.

: “Kandori…! How…How is it that you are alive!?”

: The word “Kotodama” came up in the intro as well, so let me talk for a minute about what it means. Kotodama is an old Shinto concept which has kind of been co-opted into popular culture.

: It literally means “word spirit” and basically means just that - it’s the idea that words have a kind of spiritual power to them.

: It’s talked about a lot in martial arts, with the whole idea of the “kiai shout” that’s supposed to make you hit harder.

: Another example is that whole thing about buildings in Japan not having a fourth floor, because the word for “four” sounds like the word for “death”. That’s also a kotodama thing.

: Oh, and the thing with the Calgary Flames fans putting “amharic curses” on any team the Flames go up against is also probably kotodama.

: “They summoned me back from Hades…”

: “…”

: “Why do you continue your wicked ways…? That time you were…!”

: “Hmph… ‘The fate of those who are enchanted by the shadows’… I’ll leave it at that… I’m not as young as you. I can’t change my ways now… so… what are you going to do?”

: I’d like to point out that Kandori has an official birthdate: November 8, 1968. He’s actually a few months younger than Baofu, who was born on June 13, 1967.

: Baofu then slides his laptop across the entire length of the floor. I have to wonder what the hell his laptop is made out of that he can do that, because I’m pretty sure mine wouldn’t slide very far.

: It’s probably coated in the same butter/bacon grease mixture that one driver from Daytona USA with the zero handling stat uses to coat his tires.

: I’d like to point out that by the end of Innocent Sin, Eikichi had probably been shot several hundred times.

: Kandori probably should’ve listened to Tetsugoro Kusabi and simply shot Eikichi.

: Tatsuya straight up fucking kills this guy. He is beyond giving a fuck.

: “Tatsuya!?”

: This is one detail I really like over the later games. If this happened in Persona 5, the entire party would just run. Here, you have Maya and Katsuya covering Ulala and Nanjo’s escape.

: I also really like that whoever animated this cutscene had the forethought to have Ulala and Nanjo escape first, then Baofu because his coins aren’t as long-range as a gun would be.

: “Regardless, neither you, nor they, can escape from fate… Paradox boy…”

: “I see… you, too, were enchanted… by ‘him’… then tell ‘him’ for me… That I’ll protect… Maya and everyone else…!”

: We’ll actually get to see this fight when we get to Tatsuya’s Scenario - the second part takes place here.

: And here’s the boss. Devil Sugimoto is an extremely easy fight compared to the last few. If you have Tensen Nyannyan and Mediarama, you basically can’t lose.

: Sugimoto is weak to Fire and Light. Unfortunately, the Kouga line of spells doesn’t exist in Persona 2, but Sakya has a non-instakill Light spell that works just as well.

: Apart from being able to inflict Fury and Poison, Sugimoto has a full-party ice spell that honestly doesn’t do much. The guards only attack with relatively weak physical attacks. I ignored them.

: My strategy was something like this. Maya is on Magnara, Ulala is on Mediarama, Katsuya to whatever, Baofu to Agilao, and then Nanjo to Holy Light. The only time you need to turn off auto-battle is if Ulala gets hit with Fury.

: You can see how much of a difference the Agility Source makes - Agility is now Katsuya’s second highest stat after Strength.

: Baofu, on the other hand, is becoming a rather powerful caster.

: Oh yeah, I should point out that Eikichi’s portraits are all the original PS1 ones. Why they didn’t update them to the re-done ones for the PSP version, I do not know.

: “You didn’t… you’re didn’t have to kill him! You’re all murderers, just like them!!”

: “Look carefully… Nanjo-kun didn’t kill him.”

: “I’m greedy… I take everything that I can get a hold of…”

: “I’m sorry! I said some horrible things… you are a true man! Make me your apprentice!”

: Again, this sounds nothing like the Eikichi we knew in Innocent Sin.

: “Enough with the warm fuzziness… we’re gonna beat it outta here.”

: “Hey wait! What about Tatsuya-kun…? And the stolen data…”

: I like the idea that Baofu is in the middle of that room with a dozen guys with guns pointed at him and starts removing the hard drive but they don’t care because they’re all tech-illiterate.

: “And… just forget about that guy. He has way more experience than you guys, and some guts… heck, we’d be in his way.”

: Again, amazing cutscene direction. This is why relegating the Personas to Tartarus/TV World was a horrible idea from a storytelling perspective.

: “Mishima… Yamai…!”

: “Wh… why are you the only one still alive!? You’re a traitor, aren’t you…!?”

: “Hey… couldn’t this have been the work of that ‘Sneak’ guy?”

: “Impossible… we were never followed…!”

: “Not this time… but there were plenty of chances before… we can’t stay here. Let’s go back to my place, we’ll be safe there…”

: “…I see. Now they’ve done it.”

: “Have you found something?”

: “Some of the files still have some sort of protection on them… that big thing seems to be called ‘JSM’. I don’t know the logic behind it, but it’s basically a machine that separates the Joker from the possessed people…”

: If you read the Innocent Sin LP, you’re probably asking “Hey wait, isn’t this just the Crystal Skull subplot only instead of hopes and dreams they’re stealing those enemies from Kingdom Hearts” and yes, you’re absolutely right.

: Anyway, there was one thing I forgot to mention when Chizuru brought up this subject the first time. Kegare is another Shinto term, though it came from Japanese mythology.

: If you know Japanese myth, you probably know about the story of the creation of Susano and Amaterasu - Izanagi goes to the underworld, gets a divorce, and then washes himself and makes a bunch of gods in the process.

: That bathing process is called kegare, and is one of the core practices in Shinto. My guess is that the pronunciation thing was an awkward addon from the PS1 version.

: " ‘Kegare’…? What are they going to use that for?"

: “I don’t know that far…”

: “Wait… these are phone records! The sending-end and the receiving-end are the same…? It’s a list of Joker calls!”

: “A ‘delivery list’… they knew who was going to be the next Joker. I can’t even make a phone call in peace…”

: “He’s even got records of 911 reports and police radio dispatch… that damn Shimazu!!”

: One thing I’d like to point out on that last one - people have been able to listen to police radio for almost as long as police radio has existed. It’s a very important tool for police reporters.

: In fact, in recent years the police in a number of areas (including the entire UK and a few US states) have made moves to encrypt police radio specifically to block the media.

: Metal Gear!? No, really, isn’t that just Metal Gear? Do we know if it’s equipped with an ICBM launcher?

: “Just like Elly-chan said. Because of Wang Long Chizuru’s fortunes, the whole city is in a panic. I actually believed that bitch!”

: “Wang Long Chizuru IS connected with the New World Order. She read that all of the Guardian Dragons showed signs of ‘Joka’. And at this rate, there’ll be many more people as Jokers.”

: “What she meant by a Joker is a person who has been influenced by ‘Joka’… many people believe in her readings. It’s already spreading, and those not using the Joker curse are turning into Joker also…”

: “What else?”

: “She escaped in the end… she said people like us make fortune telling necessary, and she was able to collect numerous Kegare…”

: “Kegare again…”

: “Hmm… it’s all so clear now… the fortune teller increased the amount of Jokers and the Mafia hunts them down… the captured people get “Joker-separated” by Kandori, and the police cover it up… we’ve got to find out what Shimazu is up to…”

: “Hold on… that’s not enough to prove the connection between Tatsuzou… going public with this won’t solve anything. We gotta get more evidence…”

: Two things I’d like to point out. First, Ginji Sasaki was a member of the Masked Circle in Innocent Sin - he was Prince Taurus, who just kinda showed up and then got fried by a laser in Xibalba.

: Second, we’ve basically been fighting the original Masked Circle members as bosses the entire game. We fought Sudou, we fought Noriko standing in for Anna, and now Ginji.

: What I’m saying is that yes, I’ve read ahead in the guide, and yes we’re doing another shithouse fucking Old Maid bossfight fuckfest.

: Next time, we’re going through Smile Hirasaka for a second time. You didn’t seriously think Atlus was done recycling dungeons, did you?

[SpammyV]

Persona 2, now with 50% more sequel to Persona 1 at no additional cost!

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we move on to Smile Hirasaka, there’s a few things we can do, including fixing the output resolution on my capture card. Unfortunately, this will not fix the absolute shithouse of a dungeon we’re about to enter.

: The first thing we need to do is visit Sumaru TV. Does this make any sense? No, and the entire reason we have to do it is because they put all the effort into Elly’s route.

: On Elly’s route, Elly becomes the center of almost all negotiations. Most of Nanjo’s negotiations are totally useless or only effect one demon per dungeon.

: This gets us a negotiation called “Song of a Baseball Fanatic” between Nanjo and Baofu. It is used on exactly one demon in the next dungeon.

: We can also trade our map to Salam and pick up the new map for Smile Hirasaka. Let me explain how Salam’s rewards work, since after Smile Hirasaka I took comparative screenshots.

: For most dungeons, Salam gives you a “card pack” that contains a number of random skill cards and a number of Free Tarot cards.

: When I reloaded the game after the last recording, I happened to get a Grydyne card which I gave to the Count at Time Castle. If you’re willing to reload and/or abuse savestates, this can be worth it.

: This is what I wind up spending all the party’s money on.

: Smile Hirasaka is another dungeon that becomes hell if you try to do the map sidequest. It doesn’t even make a whole lot of sense, given that Smile Hirasaka is a mall.

: I mean, you can barely walk five steps in the average mall without running into one of those big fuckoff maps that list a bunch of stores that haven’t existed in years.

: There’s also a rumor we can pick up, but we have to do a man-search for it. I went to see what rumor effect I’d gotten from that random one about the owner of Shiraishi, and found out they sell the banana char siu ramen that Eikichi had to eat in Innocent Sin.

: This lady here is the target.

: This rumor either expands Kaori’s aromatherapy menu or causes nothing at all to happen. Why this had to be random, I do not know.

: The last thing I do is get the affinity reading I mentioned a few updates ago. All it does is give you a discount at a random Satomi Tadashi store.

: The first thing you want to do here is spend all of your money. You’ll see why.

: Now it’s time to talk about why Smile Hirasaka sucks. To do that, all I really need to do is post the map.

: If you’ve read the Innocent Sin LP, you’ll remember IS’s version of Smile Hirasaka, where the mission was to find your party members and defuse all the bombs.

: Eternal Punishment’s version is surprisingly not an exact copy - it’s actually much bigger and much emptier. They added an entire floor that didn’t exist in Innocent Sin’s version that has nothing in it.

: The thing is, there’s no good reason why the mall should be as empty as it is. It was empty in Innocent Sin because of a bomb threat, but that obviously hasn’t happened here.

: The enemies here are exactly the same as in the upper floors of the lab, with the addition of Hunhau and Picollus (the little green guy on the left) who likes to spam Hula of Misfortune.

: What I highly recommend is that you set the game to Easy and form a pact with Picollus the second you reach level 30.

: Smile Hirasaka can be cleared in about 5 minutes by simply walking up to the elevator and taking it to the fourth floor. Instead, I spent like 90 minutes filling in map squares like a demented version of Splatoon.

: This sucks because most of the hallways in Smile Hirasaka are wide enough that you cannot get every map square in one go unless you’re moving diagonally at all times.

: Other highlights include the second floor having what is apparently a portal to the dark side of Silent Hill. I guess now we know where Eddie got that pizza from.

: The way the dungeon is laid out is also annoying because there’s two sides to each floor - one that’s accessible from the entrance, and another you have to use a second set of stairs from the third floor to access.

: You can complete the map before fighting the boss, so I do. I wanted to fuse some new Personas anyway.

: Shout-out to these little one-tile-wide hallways near this planter, which I have a feeling has never been a thing in a mall anywhere.

: This time, Salam gives us a bunch of useless healing spells… and Maragidyne. It’s absolutely not worth it when we have Grydyne, but I guess I’ll take it.

: The only thing on the fusion menu is Heimdall. We need him for Magarula so that we can abuse fusion spells against the boss.

New Persona: Heimdall

Origin: Norse Myth

First Appearance: Soul Hackers (the good one, not the bad one)

Norse god who guards the Bifrost Bridge between Asgard and Midgard. Owner of the Gjallarhorn, which signals the beginning of Ragnarok. Destined to fight against Loki at the end of Ragnarok, killing them both.

: “This building’s design is somewhat outdated. If we can find an air duct, it’s possible for us to check what’s happening inside, but… the question is where it’s located.”

: Maya has a flashback to better times. You know, it’s weird that her smoking never gets brought up again. It’s also weird that the “bruise acts up every time Maya remembers something” bit never gets brought up again.

: This part also seems kinda dumb to me. The whole “shadowmen” thing made sense in Innocent Sin because people were more or less getting jumped and having their hopes and dreams sucked out.

: You’d think someone would be like “Why is there a giant breakable glass Metroid containment tube full of weird goop with eyes?”

: Ginji’s eyes will randomly turn yellow. I think that’s a bug with the PSP’s video output.

: “Lives wandering aimlessly… though not satisfied, there are no efforts made for change. The one thing to do is begrudge others! That is sin! That is Kegare! That’s how the Joker consumes people!!”

: “Whew… that guy’s lost it…”

: “But your worries are fully understandable… not knowing what to do, not knowing how to live… that’s right, not having a dream!!”

: "That is why we have Wang Long Chizuru! We have Wang Long fortune telling! It is for the common man!

: “…”

: “Here, I have Chizuru-sama’s statue of a sacred dragon… Fukugi. If you believe Chiziru-sama’s words and touch this statue, you’ll be cleansed… Now, be reborn into innocence!”

: Somewhere in the audience, a young Maruki thinks “Wow, this is a really good idea!”.

: If I was writing this, they would absolutely follow up with “Heil Crabmeat! Heil French takeout!” and start running to empty the mall of any and all canned crab products to Maya’s complete horror.

: Then they come back and do a ritual dumping of the laundry basket onto the floors of the mall.

: “…!?”

: “Ma-ya, they stole your motto!?”

: “Catch Sasaki, or destroy the machine… either way, with all those people, they are going to get mixed up in it!”

: What Maya’s saying is that you can’t start a fire. You can’t start a fire without a spark. This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark.

: I’m almost positive I used that one before, but they’re asking for it.

: “Haven’t you had enough fires? Besides, I don’t think Suou-san would let you start one in front of him…”

: “Actually, I think it’s a good idea.”

: “What the hell? Unbelievable! You were always yapping ‘justice, justice, justice’ but when it’s Ma-ya, anything is okay?”

: “No, I meant…”

: “Ohhhh… Ahhhh… now this is a big surprise. With cops like this, this country really is finished… I seeeeee…”

: “Hey stupid, look up…”

: “How about burning some trash at the duct too? If we make a little smoke, it should be much more effective than just an alarm.”

: This part is honestly nonsensical. It doesn’t effect the boss fight - all it means is that you have to walk from the bathroom to the seminar room with just Maya, Ulala, and Nanjo.

: “If you ask me, there’s something wrong with you guys for being able to stay so calm at a time like this…”

: “Your reaction is relatively normal. Everybody is just used to these situations… What I don’t understand is Ms. Amano… where does your ‘deja vu’ originate from?”

: The alarm starts blaring, and now it’s on.

: “If it’s that easy, no one would struggle. Stop confusing these people with your foolish superstitions…”

: “Exactly. There is much we want to ask you. You best worry about you, rather than the machine.”

: “I’m not talking! This is an outrage! Someone get a lawyer!”

: “Will someone please shut this guy up? Amano, you know what to do…”

: “I see… extracted Kegare from the people are themselves, Joker…”

: Didn’t we learn this before we even went into the lab?

: Joker Ginji as a whole seems less bad than Noriko or Ulala were. He starts with four Shoggoth, and can revive them if they die.

: The biggest challenge is surviving the initial hit, which can be very RNG. If the shoggoths decide to explode, you’ll be hit for a shitload of damage.

: Fortunately, we can do Kamaitaichi, which does around a fifth of Ginji’s total HP even on Normal mode.

: Nanjo follows up with Nirvana, which the Shoggoth are weak to.

: Eventually, we get it down to just Ginji without him using any of his more annoying spells - he can heal himself and has Old Maid, but never used either one.

: Maya has now maxed out on Dexterity. Because we have Heimdall giving us an Agility bonus, I throw the rest of the points into Vitality to help boost her HP.

: “Damn… this isn’t good…”

: “In the end, we couldn’t find anything out… seemed to be under a strong mind control… probably a waste to question subordinates…”

: “But they’re doing the same thing all over the place, right? What are we going to do…”

: “Going one at a time gets us nowhere. Before they do any more damage, we should expose the New World Order publicly.”

: You know, in a tabloid.

: Elly immediately calls every occult magazine she can reach.

: “I want to ask you one thing. A penthouse was attacked. Was it you?”

: Here’s the good news. We don’t need to map Aoba Park. There is no sidequest for it, because apparently Salam can’t be bothered to go to the mall’s website but can go to the park.

: “Is it him?”

: “Yeah… he wants us to meet him at the Concert Hall in Aoba Park…”

: “Wait a minute! It has to be a trap!”

: “You may be right… but, I have to find out if he’s really trustworthy.”

: “Heh… we’ll see. You probably just want to find out about your father… I’m not getting involved.”

: “Do whatever you want, Baofu. Nobody asked you to come along… Amano-kun, I’ll be going now…”

: Honestly, I’d rather have Baofu. Katsuya is just kinda there for the most part.

: “Heheh… I never thought of him as a friend…”

: “Besides, he only irritates me…”

: “Hey! I’m getting tired of your shit, Baofu! Get your ass after him, now! Otherwise, you’ll be joining our friend on the ground over there!”

: “Well, if you put it that way… ch… fine… I don’t care about him, but separating from Amano right now wouldn’t be wise…”

: And that’s it. Next time, we make a second run through Aoba Park. I’m going to try and fuse something with Estoma so I can hopefully get the unique Persona there.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Just a heads up as I write this, I built a new computer, so things may or may not look a little weird. My LP drive almost died due to a SATA cable breaking off inside it, but I cleared it out.

: Aoba Park is exactly the same was it was when we left it. As it turns out, you CAN do the flower sidequest the second time.

: The first thing I do is fuse Umayadono-Ouji, who was actually in Innocent Sin and had Estoma there as well. I’m struggling to recall why I didn’t fuse him there.

New Persona: Umayadono-Ouji

Origin: A Real Person

First Appearance: Persona 2 Innocent Sin

Real name: Shoutoku Taishi. Appointed Regent for his aunt, Empress Suiko, in 593 A.D. Known mostly for his ardent promotion of Buddhism, and is credited with being a founder of Japanese Buddhism.

: Shoutoku is Persona 2’s equivalent of an HM mule. His SP costs are stupidly high for his level, but you’re never really going to use him in combat… apart from spamming Dia to rank up.

: If we go to Giga Macho, we can meet Ixquic again. I wish she could’ve been a party member.

: This is one of two sidequests we can get from Ixquic. Both of them suck. Let’s spread the rumor, which causes the hag to appear on the third floor of Giga Macho.

: Now we’ll just walk upstairs and use the Estoma trick to encounter only the hag, and… wait, what’s that Jack Frost doing there?

: Two things. First, this is a reference to Devil Summoner, where a Jack Frost and a Pyro Jack/Jack O’Lantern form the “DB Busters” (Devil Buster Busters) to combat devil summoners.

: Second, this sucks ass because it means we can’t really use the Estoma trick… not that it matters.

: The hag is a very annoying gimmick monster. She only has a couple hundred HP, but has a high chance to simply…

: Yep. She can just run the fuck away, forcing you to find her again. The second time I found her, she escaped before I even got a turn. At that point I went “Nah, fuck this” and left.

: Let’s just go to Aoba Park. Thanks to Estoma, we can just run through here without fighting anything. The enemies DO get replaced with higher level ones, but we outlevel all of them.

: One of those new enemies is Lilim, who like a lot of the older demons gets a complete redesign in Eternal Punishment that never shows up again.

: As you get closer to the concert hall, you can hear a heartbeat in the background. I did spend some time looking for the rare demon that spawns here, but had no luck finding it.

: I then accidentally crossed into the concert hall with Nanjo still using Shoutoku, which was a mistake. This is from the first recording.

: “He went inside here…?”

: “Dammit! One of these days Suou’s going to get himself into real trouble…”

: Unfortunately, the wiki doesn’t have a portrait for Togashi. I know what I can use instead.

: “I can’t ask for you to believe me, but… I wasn’t informed about the attack. The organization does not trust me… if you want to shoot, go ahead. But can you at least listen to my story… I want to atone for the sin I’ve committed.”

: Kiyotada Sumaru is entirely made up, as you’ve probably guessed.

: “20 years ago, when Honmaru Park was build, they unearthed Kiyotada’s mummy. That’s when everything began… the top leaders of the organization were responsible for the park’s construction.”

: “Until then, they were just a small local company, but now they are big enough to move this country… all because of Kiyotada’s strong curses. To me it just looks like a mummy. They claim to be able to hear voices…”

: Clearly this guy doesn’t subscribe to the Tetsugoro Kusabi school of police work.

: If you’ve read the Persona 5 Royal LP, you’ll realize that this sounds remarkably similar to Shido’s plot, and that’s because what Satomi Tadashi creates, Rehashino steals.

: “That’s foolish… what are they trying to accomplish?”

: “To them, the entire world is a ‘sin’… an innocent world is created by one tribe, with one universal utopian ideal… the eradication of Sin by Punishment… the spreading of Jokers and fortunes are solely for that purpose.”

: The funny part is that if I put some of this dialog into the Silver Case LP, you’d probably never know it’s not from The Silver Case.

: “That is such arrogance…! Sure, man commits sin… even grave sins! But shouldn’t there be atonement!? One must atone for one’s own sins. Being the Police, shouldn’t we understand that better than anyone?”

: Togashi looks at him funny. “You… do realize the entire point of the police is to fuel the prison-industrial complex and act as an unofficial tax collector, right?”

: I can only imagine what this scene would look like if this was Sae instead of Katsuya. They would cut to Makoto going “This is too complex for our audience!” after the first sentence.

: “…The problem is their will and power… you may know that fortune telling stems from an ancient curse called ‘Wang Long’… the dragons of Wang Long are underground energy flows called leylines…”

: The idea of dragon-based leylines gives me horrible flashbacks to Broken Sword 3. I never finished that game because it sucks.

: “Since ancient times man has prospered by watching, or sometimes, controlling it… they are going to use the dragon for the contrary purpose.”

: You might notice that this is almost exactly the Oracle of Maia, and that’s because I swear Eternal Punishment was made to be a Western-friendly version of Innocent Sin.

: Unlike Nyarlathotep’s plan in Innocent Sin, however, a magnetic pole shift would be far less lethal than suddenly stopping the planet’s rotation.

: In fact, magnetic pole reversals have happened several times without really doing much of anything at all.

: There’s a theory that if there was to be a total pole shift that Earth’s magnetic field would “shut off” and expose the planet to cosmic radiation, but the evidence doesn’t support that.

: “Pole shift…? That’s impossible!! That’s the purpose of the Jokers!? That would destroy the New World Order itself… that is nonsense!”

: Yep, we’re going back to Xibalba again. I’m also not sure how doing the Xibalba thing would help much in a theoretical “magnetosphere shuts off” scenario, since that would bring you closer to the cosmic radiation.

: “WHAT!?”

: This part feels like it would have made way more sense in Innocent Sin, to the point where I have to wonder if Satomi Tadashi cut it for time or something.

: Remember, half the reason Tatsuya’s father got involved in the first place was because Sudou tried to kill Tatsuya… which never happened in this timeline.

: “He’s right… I betrayed your father… I knew that this would happen ever since I heard his son was in the police academy… I knew all along…”

: “You became a cop to prove your father’s innocence… and to gain back the family bond which I had destroyed… but at least believe this… your father was a very proud man.”

: “He accepted the false accusations in order to protect both me and his family…”

: All of Shimazu’s lines here are kind of mangled. I checked, and they are completely unchanged from the PS1 version.

: “You bastard… you think you’re an enforcer?”

: This is what I like about Satomi Tadashi. How many RPGs today, let alone in the late 90s, do you think would allow their female lead to point a gun at someone?

: “Tell us where Tatsuzou is! Ma-ya’s got a really itchy trigger finger, so don’t mess with her!”

: Katsuya apparently shot two of those guys to death in the interim. I reset the game here on the first recording, because we definitely want Sakya equipped.

: Let me first explain what we’re up against. First, we have Shimazu himself. Shimazu is neutral to almost everything and only has gun skills. His only resistance is to guns.

: Then we have the four swat guys, who have almost half of Shimazu’s HP each. They resist almost everything and are weak to Havoc and Sword.

: This fight is more annoying than anything else. The swat guys have two really annoying attacks - this is the first one, which attempts to put everyone to sleep.

: The second is our old friend Sharpshoot, which is still an instant kill but no longer 100% accurate.

: The good news is that Katsuya has Wing Flap, which happens to do Havoc damage. It’s great… when he’s not asleep and/or dead.

: The rest of the fight consists of whoever is alive and not asleep using whatever they can on Shimazu while Ulala heals.

: So much for getting information or whatever the hell we were doing here. At least we killed seven cops.

: “Now’s not the time. The old man paid his dues… you show respect for a ‘man’…”

: “Let’s get back to my place… we have to figure out Tatsuzou’s next move…”

: “I tapped Tatsuzou’s phone. Either his home or office… I’ve tapped most phones the bastard should be using. Of course, I can’t do diddly about cell phones and public phones…”

: I’m imagining Baofu trying to explain wiretapping to Futaba, and her going “Why did you need a wire? Couldn’t you just hack their phone? Do phones even have wires?”

: “Yung Pao…!”

: “That guy must have been spying on us…!”

: “…”

: “…This is our chance to nail Tatsuzou’s ass… Ha! He’ll never see us comin’!”

: I’d do the song thing here, but Persona 5 sucks.

: “I’m going ahead to check things out.”

: “No need for insults. Is it ready…?”

: “It is complete. It should be a good test for X-1. Excuse me…”

: “Watch your mouth… we are in front of Gozen. Gozen’s ideas are far beyond our comprehension… we must all accomplish our duties.”

: Tatsuzou then spends a good ten seconds walking very slowly offscreen.

: If you’re playing Elly’s route, this is the first time you’re introduced to Kandori, and I think it’s the only time you see him on that route.

: Next time, we’re off to the Abandoned Factory, which is thankfully much smaller than it was in Innocent Sin and does not include the liquid waste facility.

[SpammyV]

Suddenly flashing back to my childhood and my mom asking if I’d go along with jumping off a bridge or destroying the world just because all my mummies were doing it.

[Timrod]

Summary

: I made an executive decision for this update - we’re not doing the Abandoned Factory. Instead, we’re going to do Part 1 of Tatsuya’s Scenario, even though it’s got spoilers in it.

: The reason for this is that I want to be able to do Part 3 of Tatsuya’s Scenario as soon as it shows up. This will let me skip a thing so bad that it honestly made me want to kill the LP.

: We’ll see what that thing is a few dungeons from the Abandoned Factory. I’ll give you a hint: it was in Innocent Sin and I hated it enough there without having to do a mapping sidequest.

: Meet Shiori Miyashiro. As far as I’m concerned, she is not canon.

: Tatsuya’s Scenario is basically a visual novel. It has dungeon segments, but they’re generally shorter than the main game’s.

: “It’s kind of big for someone living alone, so you came at just the right time. I mean, c’mon, this is the only place with an open room close to my workplace.”

: “Uhh, we’ll carry the living room sofa to your room later, or would you prefer a bed? Oh, and if you want to watch TV, you can use this room anytime.”

: Tatsuya’s Scenario has segments where a character will narrate without portraits. In these cases, I’m going to put the portraits up anyway.

: “I tried to keep chatting in as bright a tone as possible while I tidied up, but I might have sounded a little shrill and nervous. I don’t know if he was being considerate or was embarrassed by the state of my apartment.”

: “He loitered by the window, stoic and silent, without looking at the room. Instead, the long shadow that bore down across my floor told the tale of his mental state. Of lost bearings, of rejection, and of loneliness…”

: “He meant to vanish somewhere, like shadows slipping into darkness with the sunset, doing something all on his own, now and forever. But I wouldn’t allow it. I’ve had circumstances that have been on hold for ten years.”

: It might be because you’re a cop. Just a thought.

: “Who’re you?”

: “The fact that she didn’t deny it when I suddenly asked her name and instead asked for my identity proved it was her. I was prepared for it and opened my purse and thrust my ID into her face. Her blank expression was unusual for a kid her age.”

: “I didn’t much like my own surly portrait, which was printed above my full name and my rank as a policewoman.”

: “…I only came here to use the bathroom. I’m just about to head home.”

: “She’d already guessed why a juvie detective, and not one of the traffic cops she’s acquainted with, showed up at this hour. As Anna moved away from the wall she’d been leaning against, she told me a bald-faced lie and began walking towards the exit.”

: “Anna stopped, glanced over her shoulder, and fixed me with an emotionless stare. I realized she’d jumped to conclusions on why I’d come. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have mattered what I’d said. She’d have tried to leave, just as she’d been doing, to avoid causing trouble for the club.”

: She’s probably going to the Sumaru Genie’s gay/lesbian bar. That’s something I didn’t know about - if you talk to the Genie… I think right after Xibalba appears in IS, you find out about it.

: The Genie even invites Tatsuya there, which I think happens regardless of which love interest you chose.

: “Every community has unwritten rules. She dropped out of school and the track-and-field scene, and found her place in a world where she didn’t belong. she was already a part of this apathetic subculture.”

: Daisuke Kaneda is a game designer who used to work at Atlus, I’m not sure if he still does. He worked on the Trauma Center games, Personas 2 through 4, P4 Arena, and Nocturne.

: I don’t know if he’s the Damage Floor Guy or not, but I have my suspicions.

: “… What about it?”

: “He was killed.”

: “The first hint of emotion appeared on Anna’s face. Even that was evanescent, and when her beautiful eyebrows, twisting with suspicion, returned to her old stony-faced mask, she let out a single brief breath.”

: “And so you came to investigate me… when did he die?”

: “Anna no doubt knew far too well what the cops would ask at a time like this due to the incident that ended her sports career. She beat me to the punch by asking for Kaneda’s estimated time of death.”

: “She wasn’t just gutsy, but also quick on the uptake. Naturally, she would have an alibi. It wasn’t like I doubted it, either. But with the state of Sumaru City, it was possible to kill a person without ever personally laying a hand on them.”

: “What I want to know about is this. Have you seen this before?”

: " ‘yOu’rE nEXt.’ …The hell is this?"

: “The sender is Joker. He’s the bizarre, mysterious monster from rumor - you know, the one where if you call your number from your cell, he’ll kill someone you hate for you.”

: “You’ve heard of him, right? Something identical to that had arrived at Kaneda’s home. It seems like Joker’s conscientious enough to send an advance notice. I never would have expected it would have matched the rumor so perfectly.”

: “…Oh. So you think I asked him to kill the guy. Sorry, but if I’d wanted him dead, I’d have done it myself.”

: “That’s right. It’s my own address.”

: “…You got any hunches? I think it’s a prank.”

: “There could be some kid who’s got a grudge against me for the work I do. But no, this is my doing. I called the Joker. And asked him to kill Shiori Miyashiro.”

: Shori’s dialog kinda borders on YIIK in places, and I don’t know if that’s the translation or if Satomi Tadashi forgot how to write in the decade-plus between the original game and the re-release.

: In an ideal world, I would have played The Caligula Effect before doing this LP. I still haven’t touched it (or the sequel) because the possibility exists that I might LP them someday.

: “I didn’t know if she was lost for words, but Anna’s expression didn’t return to its blank mask. There were probably a lot of guys who’d love to see her make a different face from her usual mask. My efforts would’ve been praised by those gyrating bodies on the dance floor. Although I doubted it was this face that the guys wanted to see.”

: Something tells me that Satomi Tadashi doesn’t know how a cell phone works, given that the voicemail shortcut works on every carrier I’ve ever heard of.

: “He never said a word, but the person from rumor definitely picked up the line.”

: If she’d held on the line, the voice would’ve said “Please enter your voicemail password, then press the pound key.”

: “…Why’d you give him your own name?”

: “There’s no way I could test it using someone else’s name. Hey, how was it for you? Does Joker just kill the other person? Or does he demand a reward or compensation or something? Have you ever held a conversation with him or seen him in person?”

: “His hair - you think if he didn’t cut it, it’d look like an unkempt lion’s mane? Wasn’t he in his late twenties… maybe around 27, 28?”

: Shiori sounds an awful lot like Sae. I wonder if this is another “What Satomi Tadashi creates, Rehashino steals” moment.

: “…You wanna know that bad? Why not ask him? If there really is a Joker, he’ll come kill you, right? Sorry, since you went to the trouble of preparing that little prop, but I didn’t ask him to kill anybody.”

: “Exactly right. If the Joker was just as rumored, even if I left him alone, he’d come to me. I just had to wait. That was my intention in the beginning. That’s why I gave my name to whoever was loitering on the other side of the bug tap.”

: “Despite that, I paid this girl a visit because I wanted to calm my nerves. The photo of the victim flashed before my eyes. I’d seen the picture at the assembly HQ investigating the bizarre serial murders. Nobody wanted to die like that.”

: “If she had requested a murder from Joker, then I might’ve gotten a clue leading to his identity. Then I would have been able to arrest Joker before there’d been any more victims. But that meant this luckless girl would be accused of either being an accessory to the prime suspect for the murders, or else instigating them.”

: “I was in such a hurry to capture the true Joker that I’d only thought about my own benefit and unconsciously hoped for that. So naturally, she’d held me in contempt.”

: “This wasn’t how a policewoman representing the juvenile division, which handled the well-being of young people, should’ve conducted herself.”

: What the fuck is this writing? Yes, that’s typically what a juvenile division cop would do. This would be like Kusabi going on a multi-page monolog about what the Heinous Crimes Unit does.

: “Still, I was a little relieved. Judging by how she’d reacted so far, this girl was innocent. My expressly accusatory investigation had pissed her off.”

: “I might’ve been working on my own, but if I broke faith with the system, I’d end up just another dirty cop. That wasn’t an option for me. Besides which, the name of the game was to unmask, stop, and arrest Joker.”

: “I steeled myself, approached the employee at the entrance, showed him my badge, and spoke.”

: “How convenient. I’d like you to rent it to me 'til morning. Could you give me the key?”

: “This club reported that it’s a type-3 business, right? I wonder what time it is now. Just when did the alcohol start flowing freely? I’m sure you know the food-and-entertainment laws.”

: “If you don’t, perhaps I could take you on a tour of the police station? I think at worse you’d get a month of casual leave. The new owner won’t get mad, right?”

: I feel like someone told Satomi Tadashi that he under-explained a lot of stuff in Persona 1 and Innocent Sin, and this is the result.

: Anyway, let’s talk briefly about the whole “food and entertainment law” bit. The law she’s referring to is the “Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act”, which dates back to 1948.

: I’ll let Shiori describe it.

: “Casual leave, in other words, he’d be arrested as an accomplice, and the business would get suspended. By law, businesses where customers stand and dance must report applying for a license to serve food and drink.”

: “But once they get it, they can’t do business past midnight. Stupidly honest clubs that close that early aren’t popular. If they want to do business 'til dawn, they need to apply as a restaurant that serves liquor late at night. But if they do ‘that’, they can’t let the customers dance anymore.”

: “So-called small and medium-sized clubs conduct legally gray business practice just by looking the other way.”

: Let me talk a little more about that. The law was basically ignored until around 2010, when a guy died outside a nightclub in Osaka after a fight.

: That incident led to the police actually enforcing the law, and it got to the point where clubs posted “No Dancing” signs. By 2015, it had been largely scaled back.

: Remember kids, “grey area” just means “law the cops won’t enforce because they know if they ever do, it’ll get struck down”.

: “Thanks. I’m just going to dance 'til dawn, if I survive, that is.”

: “He gave me two keys, and I handed the man my business card, which had my cell number on it. It was the card I’d give to kids I was providing guidance to. I’d tell them to call me if they had any problems. Naturally, to prevent misuse, it didn’t mention that I was a policewoman.”

: “Then I politely asked for his cooperation - namely, to call me if anyone else tried to enter the VIP floor. I added that if morning comes and nobody leaves, he should also call Sergeant Suou of the Criminal Investigation Division.”

: “I emphasized that he not contact any other policeman. I was sure Detective Suou would be shocked if he got a call just like I requested. After all, we’d never really talked before. Even if he only knew me by name, I knew him well.”

: “All of the victims up 'til now have been targeted in places where they were alone. If I’m going to head into the back, staying by myself is ideal. There’s no exit or entrance besides this one, so if anyone but me leaves through here, that means they’re Joker.”

: I feel like that’d be a fire code violation.

: “That card from before… it’s the real deal?”

: “Hurry up and go home. Not all adults are as understanding as I am, so keep your carousing to a minimum. No matter what happens, you mustn’t come peek inside.”

: “That guy you mentioned earlier, Detective Suou…”

: "He’ll probably come see you before long. He’s heading the investigation on # 501… Joker. When he arrives, explain to him what I asked you tonight, and tell him you don’t know anything beyond that. He doesn’t think you requested the hit from # 501, either.’

: “It looked like the rumors that the Taiwanese mafia bought out this club were somehow true. Before, when I came to do guidance for the students of Kasugayama High, Club Zodiac was a cheap place arranged with constellations, as the name implies.”

: “While walking through a vulgar red corridor, the sort only the nouveau riche could like, I pulled out my cell and called a familiar number. After the fifth ring, someone picked up the line. Just like before, the rumor was true.”

: “That’s all I said before I hung up the phone. There was no going back anymore. By the end of the night, I’d know if the rumors were true or not. If I failed, I’d just add another corpse to the pile.”

: “Maya, Mayuzumi, Eikichi, Lisa, and Jun… we swore we’d never forget each other, and then we were torn apart. My friends watched Maya… and me.”

: “Maya… the other Maya was smiling right before my eyes.”

: “We did, we did, yes, we did! There’s no way I could’ve forgotten, even if you told me to… absolutely. Back when we were kids, I was always chasing after you.”

: “That’s right. Please never stop smiling like that. Jun and I promised we’d protect your smile.”

: One thing I had considered having Salty Vanilla do is a shot of Tatsuya sitting in his garage with a wedding ring on his finger and going “Also marrying, we also promised we’d marry.”

: “But I screwed up. The first time was ten years ago, the second was in ‘his’ world, and the third time…”

: What Tatsuya is saying is that the real sin that must not exist is Sonic 2006.

: “Damn it… damn it… I got the hell out of there. I had no idea what I should do. That’s why I shut myself away within the body of the other me and decided to sleep.”

: Here’s spoiler number one. Tatsuya is stuck in Innocent Sin - he’s possessing a completely different person.

: “If I saw nothing, heard nothing, and felt nothing, then maybe, just maybe the peaceful days everyone had gained would continue uninterrupted. But there was no way ‘he’ would let that slide.”

: “It dawned on me what was about to happen. People can neither run nor hide from themselves.”

: “But I won’t let anyone have their way with Maya… or this world where my friends live. I’m the only one ‘he’ can do as he pleases with, but I won’t go down easy.”

: “In exchange for everything I am, I’ll burn that scornful faceless mask and everything else of ‘his’ to ashes. It’s the one and only thing I can do to atone.”

: “The caller ID said it was from Anna Yoshizaka. I knew the me on This Side hung out with Yoshizaka, but I’m not really him. I can’t respond to her like he would.”

: “It rang ten, twenty, thirty times before I gave up and took the call. If nothing else, as long as I was temporarily borrowing this body, I figured it’d be better to tell Yoshizaka I can’t stay in touch.”

: “Whew… I thought something happened.”

: “I knew that Yoshizaka had been waiting all night for the me on This Side to show up at Club Zodiac. But she didn’t blame me for ditching her or ignoring the phone. She just expressed her relief.”

: “The only person she’d talk to like this is the other me. On the Other Side, I had also had close relationships, just like he and Yoshizaka have here. My chest hurt.”

: Somewhere on the Other Side, Tatsuya punches Philemon again.

: “Tatsuya, you said your brother was a cop, right…? Earlier, this weird cop chick came and holed herself up in the VIP floor.”

: “Seems like she called Joker and told him to kill her. She asked Nakamura to give your brother a ring in the morning if she didn’t come out.”

: “You don’t wanna see your brother, right? I’m gonna go check up on her in a bit, but it’d be better if you didn’t come tonight. That’s all.”

: “The other me had probably never broken a promise. Yoshizaka still believed I would come… so she went out of her way to call so I wouldn’t run afoul of my brother on This Side.”

: “But the bigger shock was hearing her say Joker’s name. On the Other Side, Maya and the rest of us had fought against Yoshizaka, who’d become one of Joker’s minions.”

: She joined Jun’s support group.

: One thing I’d like to point out is that during this scene, Hitler’s theme from Innocent Sin plays. I don’t know why.

: " ‘Yoshizaka’…? OK. If that’s what you say, I’ll do it, Tatsuya."

: “The me on This Side called Yoshizaka by her first name. I didn’t have time to correct myself, though. Joker might have already been close by. I was concerned about the woman dropping my brother’s name, too.”

: This whole thing feels like it was partially made for people who didn’t play Innocent Sin, but it’s weird because it spoils plot points from EP.

: The part about Tatsuya possessing someone else? That’s something that I think only gets revealed at the very end of EP.

: “Someone who wasn’t Jun had become This Side’s Joker and is committing serial murder as ‘his’ pawn. ‘Marking the end and a new beginning…’ I vividly recalled the last line of the Oracle of Maia, which had served as the trigger to the destruction of the Other Side.”

: “The same thing that happened on the Other Side was happening here. The distortion that ‘he’ had set over ten years ago had extended over two worlds.”

: " ‘He’ had known from the start what choice we’d make after losing Maya, and how things would turn out afterward."

: “Why are you still here, Yoshizaka?”

: “Sorry, but…”

: “When Yoshizaka finished explaining what was going on, the club employee called out to me, looking nervous. He was acquainted with the other me. Nakamura, if I remember right.”

: “Nakamura-san, lend me the key to the back. I know you’ve got a spare. I’ll talk to her.”

: I have to wonder how Tatsuya knows all this, since we barely poked around Zodiac in Innocent Sin.

: “You don’t have to call.”

: Eternal Punishment feels like Satomi Tadashi really, really wanted to turn Persona into a Jojo clone. Now I’m wondering which is worse: Hashino, or the inevitable Jojolion equivalent we would’ve gotten under Satomi Tadashi.

: “Nakamura yelped in surprise. Even Yoshizaka, whose expression hardly ever changed, widened her eyes. Still, they wouldn’t have been able to see the arm of my Persona, Apollo.”

: “When I held out my hand, Nakamura got the key out from the case and handed it over, trembling with fear.”

: Vibrating with motion.

: And now, for a line so incredibly stupid I had Salty Vanilla draw it.

: Zodiac has a fucking emergency katana. I had to stop and review the footage after I saw this to make sure I was reading it right.

: Even Jun, the designated Emergency Boyfriend, thinks this is dumb.

: “Don’t go spreading weird rumors. If it’s the same as the Other Side, that’ll cause problems.”

: Satomi Tadashi apparently forgot the whole “Something very bad will happen if anyone remembers Innocent Sin” bit.

: “…You’ve been acting really weird lately. Are you really Tatsuya?”

: “Women really are sharp. She was half right and half wrong. But then, it was natural for her to have suspicions. The other me would’ve dealt with them better. He’d even joked around with her before, tried to get Yoshizaka to laugh with some lame impression. Not like me.”

: Tatsuya is fighting every urge to do an Adam West impression and go “No, I’m actually… BAT-SUYA!”.

: “It was extremely unlikely I’d get Yoshizaka to move until she got an acceptable answer. Nothing for it, I decided to tell her the truth.”

: “On the Other Side, I had a scar on my back carved there by Sudou ten years ago. The other me wouldn’t have it… or shouldn’t. I was borrowing the body of that me. She wouldn’t know about any scar on my back as long as I didn’t strip.”

: “This Side branched off by erasing the fact that me, Maya, Eikichi, Lisa, and Jun met ten years ago. Maya and I never got attacked by Sudou, either. But lately, ever since I started to take control of it, scars have started appearing on this body too. It’s an omen that the Other Side is in the process of encroaching on This Side.”

: “Without replying, Yoshizaka bored her eyes into mine. She was tall for a woman, but I still had a head on her. She couldn’t tell that I was a different Tatsuya on the inside… could she?”

: I like to think that Tatsuya has an “I LOVE JUN” t-shirt on underneath his tracksuit and it’s very obviously visible.

: “Weren’t you going to do as I said? Go home already, Yoshizaka, before things get any worse.”

: It is absolutely a fucking cop-out that we don’t get Anna as a party member.

: “Is someone really gonna kill her? I said some awful shit to her.”

: “I didn’t know what she said to her, but Yoshizaka didn’t need to worry about this. That other woman should have taken responsibility. She was the one who caused this mess.”

: Next time, we’ll do the gameplay segment of Tatsuya’s Scenario, since it requires a shit-ton of grinding.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Tatsuya’s Scenario kinda sucks ass unless you either haven’t imported data from Innocent Sin, or actually bothered to level up Apollo even though Apollo sucked.

: “Nakamura had said the proprietor had changed. I wondered if they were trying to set up a Chinese restaurant in the interior. Then a few winged monsters I’d never seen before dropped down from the hallway ceiling.”

: “They were not altogether hornets, nor crabs, nor ants, nor vampire bats. But creatures unpleasantly, horrifically eerie.”

: This sounds like a line from Earth Defense Force. “Oh my god! It’s not a crab, or an ant, or a vampire bat, or a hornet! It simply cannot be classified by modern science!”

: “If I wasn’t awakened to my Persona, just looking at them might have driven me mad and sent me screaming from the room. That’s how big of a punch they packed.”

: “They snapped back their wings with a whip-like crack, and a malicious buzz started emanating from their abdomens, which were swollen like a hornet’s. They had mouths on what looked to be their heads, but it seemed like their voices came from below.”

: “At any rate, they were probably ‘his’ bright idea. This meant that there would be demons past this point.”

: “When I grumbled that to ‘him’, who was watching from somewhere, they made that grating Ia! Ia! noise from their abdomens simultaneously, then flew with incredible vigor through the narrow hallway at me.”

: If you have imported data from IS where you actually used Apollo, you’ll have Maragidyne and this is a two-turn fight. Because Apollo is only Rank 4, it takes me four turns.

: “I couldn’t afford to drag my feet here. I needed the other key that Nakamura forgot in the staff room in order to enter the VIP floor further in. It’d be easy to bust down a single door, but there was a policewoman inside.”

: “If I made a show of busting up the club, I’d get Nakamura in trouble, and the other me would get accused of a crime he wouldn’t remember committing. I wanted to do this as carefully as possible. I ran in, heading for the staff room.”

: This is Satomi Tadashi’s weak excuse for making us fight another mini-boss, which is probably the second worst boss so far after all the Jokers.

: The version of Zodiac Tatsuya goes through is the non-maze version, so it’s much shorter. There’s only two paths: one leads directly to the staff room and the other to the VIP room.

: Most of the enemies here are straight out of Smile Hirasaka and the second round of Aoba Park. I spend the better part of an hour grinding Apollo to Rank 8.

: You’re going to want to set the game to easy here. Tatsuya cannot negotiate, and Picollus is here to fuck your money supply.

: Speaking of negotiations, you can still be forced to negotiate and can do nothing but use Tatsuya’s only negotiation skill.

: “Normally, a single detective wouldn’t go that far. It also concerned me that she forbade contact with any police officer besides my brother. There must have been something else going on… could it have been that there’s some connection between the police and Joker?”

: “I jumped back and just barely evaded them as the tentacles flung a thick mucus across the entire room. Smoke rose violently from the walls. This thing’s limbs were melting them.”

: “Something was trying to rip through dimensions using the tentacles stretched to the walls as a foothold and force its way into This Side. The walls crawled and so did my flesh. I have never seen this thing until now either.”

: I’m not sure how it is that no one at Zodiac noticed that the staff room was covered in corrosive alien goop between now and when Maya got here, but okay.

: “It seemed the demons on This Side were more grotesque and in worse taste than the ones I’d seen on the Other Side.”

: “Its body was at once like a festering cloud, an octopus, and a twisted tree, and its many mucus-discharging mouths set my teeth on edge. Its black feet were split like goat hooves. If a normal person had seen this monster, they’d probably go insane.”

: I’d like to think that a normal person walks in, sees Shub-Niggurath here and just goes “Meh, I’ve seen worse, make sure you clean up all that goop” and then leaves.

: “If you call forth a god who holds sway over fire, like my Apollo, you can even manipulate flames at will. In the depths of human hearts, shared with all people, there is a domain where mythological archetypes dwell, and they grant an influence over an individual’s personality development.”

: “Maya said that anecdotes of mythological divinities the world over probably exist because of that. Gods and demons exist not in Heaven and Hell, but in the hearts of humanity. Personas even have an influence on physical and mental abilities.”

: “My ability to wield a sword like a master and my resistance to terror are both thanks to my Persona. Gods and demons are not the only archetypes sleeping in the human heart. If the collective unconsciousness is where all human psyches are born and return to, that means I too exist somewhere in the world of the subconscious as a master of arms.”

: I like to think that Jun is listening to this and laughing because Tatsuya never went above base strength in Innocent Sin.

: “If I didn’t settle things fast, I’d suffocate on this thing’s stench and the reek of the burning walls. I might have been a Persona user, but if I couldn’t breathe, I’d die.”

: Let me explain why this fight sucks. You might notice that Tatsuya isn’t at max SP - that’s because I had to blow his entire SP bar multiple times to get Apollo to Rank 8.

: By the time I got here, I was out of SP restoratives.

: Shub-Niggurath is a purely RNG-based boss fight. She has an attack called Chaos Element, pictured here, that does 64 damage which is then multiplied at random up to 8 times.

: Her only other attack that can do anything is Turbid Mist, which has a low chance to poison. She also has Freidyne, but Tatsuya nulls Nuclear and I never saw her use it.

: The fight itself is pretty easy provided you don’t get fucked by Chaos Element. Shub-Niggurath is weak to all types of physical damage and reflects all magic damage.

: “When Nakamura saw the state inside, he’d scream. I tried my best to be careful, though. I hoped he wouldn’t blame the other me afterwards.”

: The next day, Nakamura walks in to find a staff room covered in corrosive goop and giant tentacle holes in the walls. “I bet Tatsuya did this,” he says. “Yeah, it’s definitely Tatsuya and all those tentacles of his.”

: I sure hope you’re ready for like fifty text boxes of Satomi Tadashi’s unsolicited views on criminal justice.

: “When I leaned my back on the wall next to the VIP floor entrance, I started lucid dreaming while upright. A golden butterfly danced in a round room that was encircled by pillars. Its flight pattern was even frailer than usual, but I knew what was about to happen.”

: “I mean, the butterfly was just going to turn into a masked person and ask me my name. My kid brother had bugged me into playing this weird game, and ever since, I’ve had this dream over and over again.”

: I like to think that even if she told Philemon her name, he wouldn’t give her a Persona because she’s too boring. Her Persona would be an accountant from Idaho.

: Actually no wait, he’d go “Yeah no I exile you to a poorly-written story” and that’s how Sae was born and also how she got the tramp stamp. It all makes sense.

: “Sure enough, the butterfly vanished and the masked person took its place. There is something unusual, though. Their androgynous voice was harder to hear, and their body had gone dim and see-through. Now that I thought about it, the space between the pillars was redder and hazier than usual, too.”

: “Besides, nobody ever believed me when I told the truth, anyway. I had seen him, the man who dismembered my little brother. What I wanted to know was the butterfly person’s name. You want to know mine? Tell me yours first.”

: I don’t think Satomi Tadashi intended this, but Shiori comes across as a total fucking dumbass.

: “No, now that I was an adult, it was different. What I wanted to know was whether the rumor was true or not… the rumor that Joker is Tatsuya Sudou. The monstrous serial killer from ten years ago, who was never caught.”

: “Becoming a policewoman let me figure out that the culprit was Tatsuya Sudou, son of Tatsuzou Sudou, the incumbent Minister of Foreign Affairs. I had no proof, though. It had taken me ten years to get to this point.”

: This feels like Satomi Tadashi looked up “What gun do Japanese police officers use” and read the Wikipedia page for the Sig P230, and then we got this Tom Clancy-sounding bullshit.

: It’s correct, but this feels like it should be Hashino-Allanson ruled. In case you haven’t read the P5R LP, the Hashino-Allanson rule is “If you’re explaining something, and your plot allows you to ignore the explanation or use a shorter one, why aren’t you?”

: “Ever since the investigation bureau for # 501 was formed, the order for all officers to be armed had been officially given to the Juvenile Division, a cooperating jurisdiction.”

: This is some amazing fucking cutscene direction. You can’t see shit, even on the PSP screen.

: “He carried a cylindrical weapon turned over in his hand. It looked like a sword, which matched the weapon wounds of # 501’s victims according to the forensic investigations.”

: Two things here. One, how the hell did she find all this out? She’s a juvenile cop, not a homicide detective. In fact, why didn’t Satomi Tadashi just fucking make her a homicide detective?

: Second, how would she know whether it matched the wounds or not? She can’t even fucking see it!

: “I have my gun aimed at your head! Throw down your weapon!”

: The lethal weapon that again, she cannot even fucking see! Hell, we can’t even see Tatsuya moving because half the screen is black.

: “You’re under arrest for being in violation of the Swords and Firearms Control Law! Hands behind your head and drop to your knees!”

: Not for, you know, being a suspected magic serial killer.

: “He placed his hands on the back of his head and obediently dropped to his knees. I couldn’t let my guard down, though. His victims weren’t just cut down, there were some where it seemed like they were eaten alive. Who knew what kind of deadly weapon he had hidden on him?”

: “If he showed even the slightest sign of resisting, I intended to gun him down without hesitation.”

: I did a couple of searches for this, and I was not able to find a single source on it. My guess is that this is some bullshit Satomi Tadashi saw on the Japanese equivalent of Fox News.

: “Not to mention, there was no way you could stop homicidal maniacs and junkies with a single .32 caliber bullet. Overseas, there’s a controversy over whether even a 9mm caliber bullet would have enough force.”

: Yeah, this DEFINITELY sounds like he’s parroting Fox News talking points from the early 2000s. I have a feeling he’d have gotten cancelled harder than Hashino did.

: One thing I’d like to point out about her statement is that in 2014, just two years after this game released, the Salt Lake Tribune did a study on police shootings in the state of Utah.

: They found that the police had killed more civilians than drug dealers, child abusers, or gang members between 2009 and 2014. In fact, being killed by the police was the second leading cause of homicide in Utah during that time.

: “Of course, there’s probably a problem with using excessive force. The truth is, though, I wanted # 501 dead. He was clearly the culprit.”

: This kind of thinking is exactly why the US has the problems with the police that it does. Welcome to Satomi Tadashi’s Unsolicited Opinions on Criminal Justice.

: “He’d leave, free as a bird, without anyone asking what his crime was. In this country, there’s no judicial institution in place to handle mentally impaired people who’ve committed atrocious crimes.”

: I’d also like to point out that, at least according to the wiki, there have been interviews with Satomi Tadashi where he has stated these are his actual views.

: “Involuntary institutionalization ultimately only targets the mental disability. They can’t handle them as criminals. Consequently, once it’s been judged that there’s no fear of them harming themselves or others, they must be discharged immediately - even if the very doctor who examined them felt there was a risk of recidivism.”

: My guess is that this shit was one of the reasons they didn’t localize the PSP version. This game released in Japan three months after the death of Trayvon Martin, and releasing a game with this kind of copaganda in it at that time would have been about as tasteful as, say, hiring the guy who was directly responsible for the beating of Rodney King just a few months after the riots that engulfed LA to make a game about the police.

: I was going to LP Police Quest 4 at one point and dunk on it, but then I found out that Daryl Gates had almost nothing to do with the game itself - he was just in it for a paycheck.

: “There have been several movements trying to introduce measures preserving law and order with stronger binding force. However, they’ve been stymied many times over because of strong protest from the opposing faction that touts protection of human rights.”

: This almost feels like it was written by a completely different person than the writer for Innocent Sin. How the fuck do you go from making a surprisingly progressive game in 1999 to this?

: “So then what about the human rights of the victims? The rights of the victims who one day had their uneventful but happy lives ripped from them all of a sudden, and of those left behind?”

: I have to wonder whether this was something that developed in Satomi Tadashi between 1999 and 2012, or if this was there the whole time and what we saw was him being kept on a short leash.

: “My loved one’s life and future were unreasonably stolen, and the man responsible gets protected in the name of ‘human rights’. This is the status quo for this country’s administration of justice.”

: “Are you crying?”

: “I-It’s natural for someone to tear up when they’re tense!”

: I wish I could romhack this so before she can answer, Tatsuya lights her on fire and goes “Good.”

: “He could see the corners of my eyes in this dim light? Whatever, it wasn’t his damn business.”

: “…Also, that’s a wooden sword.”

: “The shadow jutted his chin at the weapon on the floor. I glanced at it without turning my head and confirmed it was true. The hallway light streaming in from the door illuminated a wooden sword. I couldn’t charge him with a violation of the Swords and Firearms Control Law.”

: “…Can I get up now?”

: “I guessed he was about 17, 18 years old. He looked like Sergeant Suou. Was he former Detective Suou’s child? What was he doing here? Was he Joker? I was confused.”

: “Do you have any ID?”

: “I think there’s a driver’s license in my wallet. I ride a motorbike to school, and I doubt it’s unregistered.”

: “He talked about himself like he was someone else… what a weird kid.”

: “Where’s your wallet?”

: “My back pants pocket.”

: “Stand up slowly, place your hands on the wall, and spread your legs.”

: “Inside his wallet, there was a normal motorbike license - the so-called mid-license. There’s his picture and name… this was Tatsuya Suou, all right.”

: “He obeyed me without question. At least his face and photo matched up at a glance. But there was something different about the boy in the photo, who gave a challenging smirk, like he’d fight anyone who looked at him funny.”

: “It was his eyes. What was with this kid’s eyes? It was like they’d suck me in. What child looked like that? There was a detached quality to his gaze, like he’d resigned himself to or accepted something…”

: “He was probably surprised that I knew his father, given his puzzled expression.”

: “I see. Did the people from the club ask you to chase me out…? Or did you come to kill me…? You wouldn’t happen to be Joker, would you?”

: “No, the club’s got nothing to do with it. I came to warn you because Yoshizaka asked me to. If you stay here, Joker really will kill you.”

: “Do you mean the advance notice? If you know about that, then hurry up and go home.”

: “You don’t understand at all. Your gun won’t do a thing…”

: “His movements were so hyper-quick, my eyes played tricks on me, making it look like time skipped. He tightly gripped the small automatic handgun in his large, decidedly un-boyish left hand.”

: “The slide was retreating a bit too. Now even if I pulled the trigger reflexively, it wouldn’t shoot. Where in the world did he learn this? I felt the forceful beat of his heart on my cheek through his bright red bike leathers.”

: “When I looked up, I saw the handle of a fruit knife or something similar thrust all the way to the hilt in the wall next to his face. It hadn’t been there a second ago.”

: “If my face hadn’t been buried in his chest just now, that thing might have struck dead on the back of my head. When he removed his right hand, which held my head, he pulled out the knife next to his head while glowering at a spot further inside the club.”

: “The blade’s about ten centimeters long, but all of it had sunk into the wall. The physical strength of the person who threw it was impressive enough, but this kid who casually pulled it out was amazing too.”

: Tatsuya with his whopping 3 points in strength.

: “At Tatsuya-kun’s question, the voice of another man behind me responded. It sounded like he was a good distance away.”

: “S’been a long time since I had booze. Here I was just thinkin’ over a drink or five about how to axe that broad, when you get right in the fuckin’ way.”

: “The voice’s owner? # 501. It seemed that until this boy came, I’d been alone with him in the dark.”

: If the writing quality has anything to say about it, this is more Alone in the Dark (2008) than anything.

: “When I arrived, I’d verified that there wasn’t anyone in the dance hall. When did he get here…? A chill ran up my spine. When I twisted my body around as if to shake off my fear, Tatsuya removed the hand that had been restraining me.”

: Honestly, at this point I would have Sudou throw another knife that goes directly through her skull and kills her instantly, and then he gets up and high-fives Tatsuya. Shiori is too fucking dumb to live.

: “Tatsuya didn’t so much as glance at me. I, too, kept my aim and my eyes fixed on the man further in. Ten years had gone by, but he looked exactly the same. This was without a doubt the man.”

: “I KNEW he was # 501. Tatsuya Sudou… I finally found you.”

: “Sudou was sprawled out on the sofa deeper inside the dance floor, legs shamelessly stretched across the cushions. He was gulping down an entire bottle of dry gin dangling from one hand. He’d probably pinched it from the bar counter next to him.”

: “He had a five o’clock shadow and unkempt hair grown out like a mane, and he was wearing nothing but a coat on his shoulders on top of a patient gown from some hospital somewhere. What a freakish outfit.”

: “He was carrying a cylindrical weapon in his left hand. It was unsheathed Japanese steel. I could arrest him ‘in flagrante delicto’ for this alone.”

: ‘In flagrante delicto’ is basically Latin for “caught in the act”. Apparently, from what Wikipedia claims, this is part of the law supporting citizens arrests in Japan.

: Shiori strikes me as the kind of person who spent four hours asking someone if she was under arrest and telling them they couldn’t legally arrest her only to find out she was talking to a mailbox.

: “Tatsuya walked right up to that Sudou without a trace of fear. At some point, he’d picked up the wooden sword I knew I’d kicked away. He was next to me this whole time, how had he picked it up?! Flustered, I hurried after him.”

: “These two clearly knew each other. But Sudou said this was the ‘first time’. What did they mean by the ‘Other Side’? Who did they mean by ‘he’? Was it supposed to be Tatsuzou Sudou, the subject of all those unsavory rumors?”

: “I’m a stand-in, y’know, a stand-in. Just 'til the real one graces me with his awakening. The real Joker ain’t me. You’d know that beeeeest of all though, wouldn’t’cha?”

: “…Yeah. Jun isn’t a filthy murderer like you. You’re Tatsuya Sudou. You can’t just take Joker’s place.”

: “Bwahaha! Yeah…? Yeah, true. He ain’t got an ugly mug like me. Thanks for the tip, ya fuckin’ brat. What I need is a mask - Joker’s mask.”

: Why did Satomi Tadashi feel the need to explain the paper bag thing?

: “Sudou uttered a vulgar snicker and gulped down the rest of the bottle. The booze that spilled out of his mouth tracked down his throat and drenched his bloodstained hospital gown. The one gracing him… Joker’s stand-in… what in the world did they know that I didn’t?”

: “A detective shouldn’t say anything like that, but right then all I could do was scream it out. It didn’t matter if he did turn over a new leaf, it still wouldn’t bring Takuya back. Tatsuya glanced back at me with a slightly shocked expression.”

: “Y’know that ‘thermodynamics first law’ thing? It’s all, heat an’ energy, there’s only so much of it to go around and you can’t change what all you got.”

: “Get it? There’s a fixed volume’a’ energy in the universe. It’s all just gotta diff’rent form. That’s how it is. This fate shit’s just the same. You got one guy who gets to be happy, so another guy’s gotta be unhappy t’make up for it.”

: “Like the meals you eat, right? You throw away what you can’t polish off, right? In return, some asshole starves to death somewhere else inna world.”

: This is getting dangerously close to the plot of Ni no Kuni, and now I want a Ni no Kuni 2 fangame where Sudou gets isekai’d. He’d have lit the fucking rat king on fire.

: “Ahhh, I get it now. The voices are amazing. Voices! That broad’s kid brother, he was YOUR stand-in.”

: I have to wonder… in the Extra Dungeon, which you only unlock on Elly’s route, there’s a guy who I think is supposed to be Satomi Tadashi who asks you a bunch of questions.

: One of them is how many times Sudou says “voices”, and it’s something like 35, not counting when he appears in the Extra Dungeon.

: This would add at least a handful to the count.

: I’m… not sure I do. Tatsuya didn’t die, so theoretically Shiori’s brother shouldn’t have, either. It sounds like he had a Persona, so I imagine that like his sister, he is a complete idiot.

: Dipshit probably sat there with his Persona out monologging for like an hour until Sudou got bored and stabbed him to death.

: “Tatsuya watched my face with widened eyes while listening to his story. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, either. Takuya was this boy’s replacement…?”

: “The two men all of a sudden were locked in mortal combat. Over Tatsuya and Sudou’s heads, the shadows clashed in the same form. Scarlet and sable flames intertwined and whirled all through the dance floor like two snakes trying to swallow each other whole.”

: “Several bottles that had been left on the counter exploded, and alcohol-fume flames ran over the countertop.”

: “Lay just one finger on Maya and I swear I’ll hunt you down and kill you like the dog you are. Every time, in every world…!”

: “An’ whose fault is it that bitch died, huhh? Whose fault is it the Other Side got blown to hell!?”

: I mean, admittedly there was kinda no way to win on that one. Even if Maya hadn’t died to Maya Okamura quite literally teleporting behind her, Okamura would’ve killed herself and still fulfilled the Oracle.

: “Shut up…!”

: “You killed 'em all. I almost feel sorry for ‘em. Take a good hard look at my Persona’s happy fuckin’ face! Loser! Murdererrrr!!”

: The way the dialog is written here makes it seem like Sudou is dropping either a techno remix or a Youtube Poop.

: We’re now fighting Sudou for the… what is this, the third time? I think it’s the third. This fight is piss easy, but you need Apollo at max rank. Why?

: The answer is because Nova Kaiser is the one thing Apollo has (apart from Freila, which I have to ask why Apollo even has in the first place) that can really damage Sudou.

: Sudou also has Nova Kaiser, but Tatsuya nulls it. He also has Pulinpa… which Tatsuya nulls. The only move he has that can do damage is his physical attack and Megido, which won’t do much.

: “Sudou’s sword, thrust into the floor in front of me, brought to mind a grave marker. In the rain, he was a solitary silhouette reminiscing on a lover lost a long, long time ago.”

: “Lone Shadow… he struck a desolate figure, like something torn from a movie by that kind of title. Maybe the fury I’d caught a glimpse of a moment ago had been a dream. The flames had already been extinguished, but no fire alarm had gone off.”

: “Had one not been installed, or was it turned off? Either way, that was a violation of the Fire Services Act. Sudou had escaped. Just before Tatsuya’s wooden sword could split his face in two, he’d vanished, as if sucked in, into a round patch of darkness that had opened up in midair.”

: “For a long time after that, Tatsuya stood stock still. I just watched him. We were both soaked from head to toe. At last, head still bowed, he pulled out the sword Sudou had left behind and murmured, subdued:”

: “What was your brother’s name?”

: “Takuya. If he had lived, he would be about your age.”

: “Can I ask when he died…?”

: “It was a sweltering summer night. Ten years ago, August the XXth. On the grounds of the shrine in Rengedai. I found him. Sudou had just thrown Takuya’s head into the underbrush and was about to run away.”

: “That’s the day… how could this be…?”

: Shiori puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, my brother had the power to light people on fire, but he just didn’t because he was busy giving Sudou his opinions on Israel.”

: “But this kid could never be someone’s pet dog. He was more like… a wounded lion who had removed himself from the pride.”

: Here’s what I don’t get, right? Was Tatsuzou the foreign minister for over a decade? How did she know who Sudou was?

: “Your father promised me he’d arrest Sudou. Three days after that, your father was discharged for accepting bribes. Purportedly, he’d accepted multiple bribes in compensation for disclosing investigation info to organized crime groups. It was complete bullshit.”

: “Your father had been set up by Sudou’s father and another police officer. His partner betrayed him.”

: And another thing. Katsuya has known this for years at this point. In fact, it’s entirely possible Tatsuya does too, given that you could learn about it in Innocent Sin. How does he not know?

: “Dammit, there was no stopping it now. This wasn’t my story to share, but it wasn’t fair to get him to tell me everything he knew if I didn’t spill my guts too.”

: “Whatever burden this kid was carrying, I wanted to share it. I couldn’t help but feel that if I didn’t, he’d end up falling into a bottomless Hell. I was sure he was just barely keeping his balance on a very thin edge, much like the blade he now had in hand. There was no way it was okay for a teenage boy to make a face like that.”

: “That’s why I became a cop. I thought the police weren’t trustworthy. He took responsibility for a crime he didn’t commit to protect you, your brother, me, and his back-stabbing friend from Sudou. It must have killed him inside…”

: “Oh…”

: “I might have just made things worse. I didn’t have the silver key to open the door he had shut tight. I wagered the only one who did was Maya Amano. But whether with a wire or whatever, I wanted to meddle anyway and pick that lock open.”

: “I’m so sorry. What Sudou said was true… it’s my fault your little brother died…”

: All I know is that I’ve suffered through enough of this bullshit and… what do you mean there’s still an entire second part!? Fuck!

: The second part will require me to spend all the party’s money on healing, because it ends in a four-part boss fight ending with Kandori, who has most of his bullshit from P1 still sitting around.

[SpammyV]

I would say that chapter took a sudden turn but I’m not sure if it still counts as a “sudden” turn if you monologue about 80s Crimepocalypse stuff for a dozen text boxes.

[Timrod]

Yeah, and it’s only really going to get worse. I looked at the script for Part 2.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we go into Part 2 of Tatsuya’s Scenario, I go ahead and spend all the party’s money on healing items. In particular, we need healing items and ohnusas, which cure a number of ailments.

: Meet the first mistake Satomi Tadashi makes in this segment. This is Tatsuya and Katsuya’s father, the one who was still in prison in Innocent Sin. He does not get an introduction card.

: “Former Detective Suou removed the earphone, shook his head and looked up at me. After a moment, he half-rose from the bench and handed the voice recorder back to me. There was no change in his dumbfounded expression. Of course.”

: “If I hadn’t seen Tatsuya and Sudou’s Personas myself, I doubt I’d have believed it either.”

: Shiori actually says that line as opposed to internally monologging it, I just didn’t use a screenshot because I’ve been stripping out the honorifics. Here’s my position on honorifics: honorifics in English are usually bad writing.

: I say that because there’s times they make sense to use - think games like Ace Attorney where that kind of thing could be an important clue to someone’s identity - but if you’re using them because there’s no other obvious way to grasp the relationship between two characters, that’s just bad writing.

: This… makes no sense. If you’ll recall, Tatsuya is actively going out of his way to ensure that no one remembers Innocent Sin’s world. Him spilling it to Shiori is plain out of character.

: “I removed the charm that I’d inserted into my police notebook.”

: “This is the student emblem that Tatsuya lent me.”

: “Supposedly, so long as you have the Seven Sisters emblem on you, you’ll be safe even if Joker targets you. It’s been a hot topic among the kids lately. And in truth, Sudou hasn’t appeared before me ever since.”

: “So I said, but he probably couldn’t believe me. Adults needed adult logic.”

: “Just as the rumors say, they have things like this for sale.”

: A G33 is a kind of Glock, which suits Shiori perfectly because like Shiori, they’re blocky and dense.

: “It might be an ultra-compact handgun that you could tuck into the palm of your hand, but it used .357 SIG bullets. It had firepower comparable to a .357 magnum - close to five times that of the .32s the station lent us. It’s often called a ‘pocket rocket’.”

: “Naturally, these don’t get supplied to Japanese police officers. The guns we’re lent for work have to be returned each day to the service office, so I purchased this weapon for my own personal protection.”

: “If you abide by the rules against criminals who use Personas or demons or whatever, you won’t be able to defend yourself.”

: “So the former detective growled as he verified the weight of the gun and the bullets in the magazine. Said rounds aren’t the so-called full metal jackets, which are the full penetration ammo allowed for use in P230 JPs and New Nambus.”

: “These were jacketed hollowpoints, which exposed the lead on the tip and had a pit in the center. They were warheads meant to stop a person stone dead. Their penetrative power fell short compared to FMJs, but when it came to dealing damage to soft targets like human bodies, they were far superior.”

: “This is because the lead mushroomed at the moment of impact, it efficiently delivered a shock and caused massive blood loss. As a result, their use was prohibited in international warfare per the Hague Convention. I heard it’s because they were deemed inhumane due to the unnecessary suffering they caused.”

: “Apparently there was such a thing in this world as humane warfare.”

: “Even using black market routes from the mainland, the Philippines and Russia. I don’t know how it works precisely, but I can only conclude that rumors have become true.”

: I’m not going to talk about all of Shiori’s gun-related claims. Instead, what I’d like to point out is that we just witnessed 20 textboxes worth of completely fucking pointless monologue. I think if Hashino had never taken over as writer, I would probably have wound up calling it the Tadashi-Allanson rule.

: Seriously, this feels like something I’d expect out of an inexperienced writer working on their first story, not out of a professional writer who at this point had written multiple commercially successful games.

: The worst part about it though is that you could absolutely work this into an actual plot point/worldbuilding thing with a bit of creativity. Imagine something like flame wars on gun forums turning into rumors that are making guns completely useless at random.

: “Next to him, the wrappers for the anpan we’d lined up and eaten together swayed in the autumn breeze from under the cardboard milk pack. He’d squeezed in time for me during his lunch break, so we wound up eating here as we talked.”

: “It’s barely any meal at all for a security guard who spent all his time on his feet, but we couldn’t exactly chat about all this over at the cafe around the corner. I asked when his lunch break ended, and that time’s already passed. I’d feel bad to keep him here for much longer. I’d better get back to the main issue.”

: “He believes that as the only one who hasn’t lost his memory, he has to do this all alone. That’s why.”

: “No… I suspect not. It seems Sergeant Suou is cooperating with a woman named Maya Amano, whom Tatsuya is trying to protect. Tatsuya said he doesn’t want to get his friends from the Other Side or his family involved. That’s why he left home.”

: …He doesn’t want to get his family involved, and that’s exactly why you’re talking to his dad. Shiori is a thousand times more SMART GIRL than Makoto.

: “This is fundamentally not a task for children. It’s our job as police officers. However, you and I both know that the police are not reliable.”

: “Thinking over his former friend, Suou-san looked up at me as if begging for good news. I didn’t have any I could tell him, though.”

: “He’s connected to Tatsuzou Sudou. It’s clear that he and Captain Shimazu are obstructing the investigation to make sure Tatsuya Sudou doesn’t get detained.”

: “He seemed to age ten years as his head sagged down, hand on his brow. It was probably tough knowing his best friend betrayed him AND continued to participate in the crimes for which “he” should have been arrested. Somewhere inside, he still trusted Togashi.”

: “But he can’t shoulder the burden all alone. I’ll support him to the extent that I’m capable. Tatsuya needs the help of adults who know what’s really happening.”

: Now I see where Hashino got it from. She’s fucking recapping a scene we not only just saw, but had to go through in its entirety to even make it here. There is no skip button.

: “I’d provide him with a place to stay and information on the Sudou investigation. In return, he’d make sure Sudou dies and stays dead. Most likely, no matter how things go, Tatsuya will eventually have to settle things with Sudou regardless.”

: As we’ll learn in a minute, this takes place during the Aerospace Museum. Sudou’s probably already dead. Again.

: “No matter how evil that someone may be, the fact that he’s ending their life will leave an indelible scar on Tatsuya’s heart. But it’s not all his fault. I’m the one who requested Sudou’s death. I don’t care if it’s just a consolation. It might be enough to allow him to forgive himself.”

: What the fuck are you talking about? Tatsuya never gave a fuck about Sudou. He’s already killed Sudou once at this point. This is Samus having a mental breakdown in Metroid Other M all over again.

: “Suou stood up then, the shade of anguish fading from his eyes. It seemed he’d made the decision to watch over his son, who was trying to oppose a cruel fate.”

: …What? Wasn’t it established in Innocent Sin that he lives with Katsuya? Why would his father even put out a missing persons report? Why was this never bought up in Innocent Sin?

: “Thank you very much.”

: “I bowed my head, grateful from the bottom of my heart. He was basically telling me he was giving me his son’s life, when I couldn’t have complained if he’d struck me instead. But with this, it should get a little easier for Tatsuya to make his move. Even at the best of times, he stands out. So long as he’s moving around in this city, it’s better to remove as many unnecessary hurdles as possible.”

: “Suou-san and me, Chief Togashi and Sudou’s son, the head of investigations and the kids who created This Side, and finally the woman who holds the fate of the world: Maya Amano…”

: Wait, what? No she doesn’t. She only mattered because of the Oracle of Maia, which doesn’t exist in this timeline.

: “Tatsuya’s core connections spread out from him like a mandala - but a warped one, fashioned by a malicious artisan to mock its subject and viewers.”

: I feel like this writing exists to mock its subjects and viewers.

: “While the individuals look unrelated at a glance, they draw a similar relationship chat through someone else. For us, whose names joined the list without any of us the wiser, ten years’ time hasn’t given us any resolution at all.”

: “All the loss and despair we struggled to endure, all the sorrow and rage that piled upon us, was nothing more than the overture. That said, we’ve had plenty of time to make sure we recover even so. Don’t underestimate us humans.”

: “I got to meet Tatsuya, and I can extend a hand to kids who’ve committed crimes without forcing them into the twisted society adults created.”

: “It might be impossible for now, but one day, I want to make our society one where kids like Tatsuya can live with a smile. That’s the task of us adults. Kids mustn’t be forced into a world where they have to sacrifice something in order to enter it.”

: “Overhearing the voices of children running nearby, Suou-san and I shared a glance and looked up at the sky. I couldn’t see it from here, but perhaps it was true that the blimp was flying. Come to think of it, I heard fire truck sirens wailing just a bit ago. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling that Tatsuya is almost certainly on that blimp.”

: I was going to do a lazy edit to remove the honorific here, but then I decided not to.

: “I knew there wouldn’t be a response. At this hour, Shiori should still be at work. It still felt like I’m barging in here, but if I treated it as anything but home, she’d get mad.”

: He’s calling Shiori by her first name, despite the fact that at this point he’s known her about as long as he knew Yukino, who he still referred to by her last name.

: “I hopped into the bathroom and took a shower with my motorcycle leathers still on. It was already soaked with loads of saltwater; it’s quicker to wash off the salt this way.”

: “Tatsuya Sudou is dead, but I don’t think this is the end. Maya also hadn’t given up. It seemed like all of them - my brother, Ulala, and that other guy - were chasing me and Sudou down.”

: “When I saved Yoshizaka at the Sevens clocktower, I gave Maya an emblem and advised her to spread a rumor so I figured it’d be safe for me to leave her alone for now… I was naive.”

: I know Satomi Tadashi has him call Anna by her last name to make it obvious that it’s not the same Tatsuya, but it’s still dumb he calls Shiori by her first name and not Anna.

: “The more I pulled away, the more she’d approach me with that steady smile until before I knew it, I couldn’t get her out of my head. Even way back, she would have gotten to me like that, but giving her that advice was only fuel for her engine.”

: “Still, I was right to keep an eye out for Jun in the meantime. I knew Sudou, who had already tried to abduct Yoshizaka, would absolutely try to force Jun into the masked role of Joker, and I had been right.”

: I think we all know that if Jun became the Joker again, he’d turn the “call your own number” thing into a phone-based flower delivery service.

: “Honestly, I wanted to settle up with Sudou before he captured Jun, but I got thrown off when Maya appeared. I decided I’d never have anything directly to do with him again, but Jun got involved and at that time, he ended up recognizing my face…”

: Wait, why five? Eikichi, Lisa, Jun, Maya. That’s four.

: “I’m sure ‘he’ picked his next move ages ago. It’s obvious I still haven’t gone even one millimeter off the rails ‘he’ laid down. Once I stripped and washed the salt off my skin too, I got out of the shower and changed into the jeans Shiori bought me.”

: “I’d like to just let my leathers dry in the sun, but there wasn’t any point. I flipped the switch on the dryer in the washroom. I headed to the room I’d been borrowing and threw myself down onto the single sofa-bed.”

: “Aside from the sofa-bed, there were ten cardboard boxes of Shiori’s in the corner that she hadn’t unpacked and a clothing case for me. That was it. I was grateful just to have a place I can stay, somewhere close to Maya in case anything happened. That was more than enough.”

: “However, I really should’ve left without saying a word the night we met at Zodiac and kept Shiori from getting involved with this any further. But Shiori told me about her younger brother. I couldn’t leave in silence then. Her brother was murdered by Sudou in my place.”

: “The Other Side’s Sudou set the shrine on fire while we were locked up in it. Since I was just a kid, I was finally able to escape by just barely squeezing through a gap in the floorboards. I went outside in order to save Maya, but I was stabbed in the back.”

: “That’s when I awoke to my Persona and burned Sudou’s face. Sudou thought that Maya had done that, so that’s why he stalked her. But when we lost to ‘him’, in order to recreate a world where Maya lived, we changed history a little bit and some things were erased so they never happened.”

: “On This Side, we all never met 10 years ago. So, Sudou also never stabbed me. To fill that hole, Shiori’s little brother was killed. I understood why. It was a present from ‘him,’ showing me what happens when we change history.”

: I refuse to believe this is canon because I think Tatsuya would realize how stupid this constant reiteration of plot points we already know is.

: “I wanted to kill him. I wanted to die and disappear. I dug my nails into the mark ‘he’ left on my right arm.”

: I’m starting to wonder now if Bloody Destiny was originally meant to be a theme for Tatsuya’s Scenario, since I mean, “Night beast grab my right arm” and all.

: Tatsuya does have his own music: there’s a new battle theme and a new boss theme, both of which played in Part 1.

: There’s a voice line here that plays but is not subtitled. It’s Maya’s voiceactress, and from the translator’s blog, she says the following:

: “Let’s speak positive! Please leave an optimistic message!”

: “The sudden ringing of the telephone brought me to my senses. I was so overwhelmed by exhaustion that I thought I heard Maya’s voice on the answering machine message.”

: Wait a second, when did Tatsuya ever call Maya’s answering machine? He forgot she existed for a decade before Innocent Sin happened, and we never saw him do it in Innocent Sin.

: “The incoming call was on the landline in Shiori’s room. But something was odd. The person who called in didn’t say a word or hang up; they just stayed on the line, silent. I strained my ears on what I could hear in the next room through the slightly ajar door. It was after maybe a minute that a man’s voice suddenly, hesitantly began to whisper.”

: “Contact my brother? I didn’t get it. I guess the guy who called Shiori was in trouble. Wait, ‘who you called’…? I had a bad feeling about this. I jumped to my feet, hurried into Shiori’s room, and turned on the TV.”

: “On the Other Side, ‘he’ got humanity to self-destruct by making rumors come true and spreading anxiety through society. I got the sense that by going out of his way to make me run into Sudou and spreading the rumors about Joker, he was using the same tricks even on This Side.”

: “Even the news was just another one of ‘his’ tools. I flipped through the channels until a program with that shady fortune-teller woman who did the Wang Long fortunes that were popular these days caught my attention.”

: There’s a five textbox or so replay of this scene, which we saw back after the Aerospace Museum before going to GOLD. I’ll skip it.

: “My heart pounded in my throat as every hair on my body stood on end. My memories of the Other Side and what had happened on This Side intersected dizzily in my head, and I understood what the answering machine message from a moment ago and Sudou’s last words meant.”

: “The man who phoned in knew both that Shiori had called Joker and what was said on TV just now. So he furtively warned her that there was a danger that she herself would become Joker. I didn’t know who the hell that was, but it was someone who knew what’s going on - but he couldn’t do anything about it himself. That was why he told her to ask my brother for help.”

: Katsuya is apparently the Fox Mulder of the Japanese police department.

: “Shiori said that there were guys in the police force who’re trying to mislead the investigation on Joker and Sudou. Most likely, he was someone in the police who knew that, same as Shiori.”

: It’s pretty obviously the police chief.

: " ‘The fear has been spread!’ ‘The Joker won’t die!’ What Sudou was saying was that this is how Joker will circulate and multiply."

: Here’s what I don’t get about this whole thing. Why does any of this exist? Why do we need to know that Tatsuya is in an apartment watching TV?

: What about this is more interesting than the main plot, enough that we really need this to exist to tell it to us? The answer is nothing, because it’s not interesting.

: “Joker was already drawing society’s attention. Air a program like this, and it’d become a rumor in a flash. It was a matter of time before Joker would appear all over town.”

: “Respectable people would just laugh off a program like this. But what happens if what the rumored fortune-teller says comes true? What was a joke will become the seed for ‘what if?’ for a ton of people.”

: “People will spread it by word of mouth, fear and anxiety will in turn spread like an epidemic, and at last it will become reality. That’s how the curse that people unknowingly set off became common knowledge and the Other Side fell to ruin, just as ‘he’ planned. The same thing was starting to happen here - with the person closest to me as the sacrifice.”

: She was ALREADY the sacrifice! She died in Innocent Sin! You should remember that, given that’s the entire reason that you’re some kind of multidimensional ghost like the Devil Summoner protagonist! Fuck!

: “No good, she wasn’t picking up. It alarmed me that it wasn’t even going to voice mail. I headed back to my room, picked up the sword I stole from Sudou at Zodiac, and left Shiori’s house.”

: Fuck honorifics.

: “When I jumped the security fence and reached what looked like the security room for the research lab, I found the security guards had already been overcome and the alarms and monitors cut. No wonder it was so easy for me to sneak in.”

: “I found three warped coins on the floor next to the security guards collapsed in front of the door. There was only one person who could take out gun-toting enemies with something like that: Baofu, that shady old man.”

: He’s fucking 32! He’s not even old!

: “Which meant Maya and my brother were here, too. They were probably a step ahead of me and got wind that the kidnapped Joker users were dragged here. This was going to be a pain.”

: “Two full days had passed since I left Shiori’s place and tracked the rumors to this place. In that time, Shiori hadn’t returned home or to the police station. There was no mistake, ‘his’ underlings had kidnapped her.”

: “All over town, people who used the Joker curse had been turning into Joker-users and for some reason, getting kidnapped just as quickly by some unknown party. I needed to simultaneously rescue Shiori, Maya and the others, and figure out who the guys hunting down Joker users really were.”

: They were the pawns ‘he’ was using in place of the Masked Circle. I’d knock out all three tasks at once. If possible, I wanted to get my hands on the information here before Maya and the others did, then erase my tracks so they wouldn’t get in any deeper than they already had. Could I do it?"

: Next time, we’ll start the gameplay segment. Can you believe we’re not even halfway through this trash fire? I recorded this days earlier than I usually do, and I still barely got the update out.

: Seriously, I now understand that there’s a very good reason this never left Japan. This sucks, Atlus knew it sucked, and knew that if they dummied it out that people would call them on it.

[Timrod]

Summary

: The second half of this scenario is a lot of backtracking through the lab, most of which we did the first time we were here. I’ll be skipping as much of that as I can.

: Tatsuya’s version of this dungeon is the same as Maya’s, except lazier. I mentioned it earlier, but if you do the non-maze version of Club Zodiac, all the chests will be empty because Tatsuya opened them in his version.

: The developers did not put the same amount of effort into this. There will be boxes in Tatsuya’s version of the dungeon that straight up do not exist in Maya’s.

: Our first stop is the cutscene room in the basement.

: Remember in the last update, how I said that one of the few valid uses for honorifics are for a scenario like when a character is in disguise? This would logically be one of them… except instead of using it, Satomi Tadashi just kinda drops it immediately.

: “He scared me half to death. Why was he here…?”

: “Wh-what’m ‘I’ doing here? What’re YOU doing here? Did you come here with Amano and the others?”

: “So they were here after all… judging by how he phrased it, it seemed like he bumped into Maya and the others in this research building. You’ve gotta be kidding me… I was going to have my work cut out for me at this rate.”

: One thing I should point out: I’m stripping the honorifics, but Tatsuya does refer to Maya using the “nee” honorific at all times, kind of like how everyone called her “Big Sis” in Innocent Sin.

: Tatsuya has just made a massive fucking slip, and Eikichi will not call him out on it.

: “I’m not too sure, but they went to investigate somewhere deeper inside this building. Damn, this place is somethin’ else.”

: “The guys who were taken here are in the back. Is that everyone?”

: “I didn’t see any sign of Shiori. Was she somewhere else…?”

: “Yeah, these guys are the only ones here. I’m looking for a guy named Sugimoto, myself. I heard they were doin’ human experiements, those bastards.”

: “This guy called Nanjo’s gonna look after 'em at the hospital, so I’m gonna take 'em to the trailer in the parking lot.”

: “Nanjo? Yukino’s acquaintance? This place originally belonged to the Nanjo Group. If this Nanjo was working with Maya, then that might mean that not everyone in the company was acting as ‘his’ pawn.”

: “I couldn’t tell him that I knew his Other Side’s self very well. I’d be in trouble if this guy didn’t forget everything. Still, Eikichi’s reason for being here suddenly hit me. Even on the Other Side, he and Sugimoto got on like cats and dogs.”

: “So you came here looking for him after he used the Joker curse on you? You’re as soft-hearted as ever.”

: “…You sure know a lot about me.”

: “Take this.”

: “The hell is this? Don’t tell me you buy that rumor, too?”

: “Shut up and take it. I’ll stick with you as far as the parking lot. Follow me.”

: “So long as this Eikichi and the synchronized Eikichi didn’t remember the Other Side, he wouldn’t be able to use his Persona anymore. I couldn’t leave him be.”

: We now have to backtrack to the security room. I found out that Tatsuya can successfully negotiate with Python - an enemy we’ll run into I think in the Abandoned Factory.

: I also forgot to take the game off Easy difficulty, even for the boss fights. That’s probably for the best, given how annoying two of them can be.

: There’s a box with a couple of Ohnusas, which I already have like 30 of. You absolutely need that many, otherwise the fight with Kandori can become unwinnable.

: “I made Eikichi wait outside, headed into the security control room, and walked into a faceful of guns. I didn’t figure the security guards had noticed me. I guessed they came from another floor to check things out.”

: Even on Normal, this fight is over in a couple of turns. The only annoyance is that the enemies can use an attack that causes “Illusion”, which is Persona’s equivalent of “Blind”.

: Illusion works even against spells, so when we do this fight a second time a bit later, I wind up wasting four turns or so trying to get the last hit off before curing it.

: “Yeah… Hey, Suou. You and me, we’ve been talking real casually to each other for a while, but I gotta ask - how d’you know my name?”

: He asks about this, but not “Why do you keep calling her Maya and also using the honorific for an older sister?”

: “Who doesn’t know the Undie Boss of Cuss High?”

: “Undie Boss? The hell is that? It’s kinda familiar, but it also kinda pisses me off…”

: “I messed up. It looks like he never had that nickname on This Side. I couldn’t talk to him any further than this.”

: “Hey, what’re you gonna do?!”

: At this point, I got real confused. There’s no way to progress because both the A-B shutters and the keycard shutter are down. What you’re supposed to do is come to this big, pointless room that we had to map out as Maya.

: In this fight, Tatsuya gets Illusioned and I waste like four turns watching this fucker dodge Agidyne until I cure it.

: We go through both damage floor rooms and switch the doors again.

: “They probably meant Maya and the others.”

: “Shinjo… I’d never heard the name before, but it was clear he or she was more dangerous than these guys. Intentionally leaving intruders alone meant either they were confident they’d catch them in a trap, or else they wouldn’t get in their way. This kind of situation could get ugly real quick.”

: “Either way, it looked like I’d better hurry. I’d grab the keyring hanging from the older guy’s belt. He’d taken out another cigarette and was trying to light it.”

: “The young guy nodded and started pawing at his pockets. What an idiot.”

: “I’d bought this thing because my hand felt empty without one. It’d surprisingly come in handy.”

: “Just as the younger one found his lighter, he finally noticed me, gaping in shock. Quick as a wink, I smashed my left elbow into the older guy’s face and dropped him. Then I sandwiched the younger guy against the shutter and smashed the hilt of my sword into his solar plexus.”

: “I saw the older man crumple to the ground from the corner of my eye. I went easier on the younger one. He managed to keep to his feet, doubled over in pain and gasping for air. I grabbed him by the nape of the neck, slammed him into the fence, then unsheathed my sword just enough to expose the blade, which I pressed against his neck.”

: “The elevator only has buttons for three floors. How do you go higher?”

: “Who does? That guy?”

: “Looks like I had to go by elevator to get to the other side of the fence. When he told me the older guy’s key ring had the key to the elevator switch board, this time I gave him a knee to the solar plexus as a present and put him to sleep.”

: I feel like this is the problem with silent protagonists. Tatsuya never really felt like an edgelord in Innocent Sin, but I guess we’ll never know given that he had no lines.

: “It was probably pointless to ask these guys about Maya and the others. I grabbed the key ring from the sprawled-out older guy as my reward for the fight, and then left the area.”

: “I opened up the switchboard and flipped on the power to the elevator. I didn’t know how they did it, but it looked like it was set up to automatically cut the power if the elevator’s not used at a fixed time.”

: “These security protocols are such a pain in the ass… but if they’re sticking with them so rigorously, they must be hiding something that’s worth it. I stepped onto the elevator and pressed the button for floor 2.”

: This is a little bit of a spoiler, since this is a carbon copy of the boss we’re going to be fighting in the Abandoned Factory.

: “It reminded me of the Order of the Holy Lance from the Other Side. A model number, X-O, was painted on the body.”

: “It looked like someone was piloting it. The young guy I beat up earlier screamed from the other side of the fence next to me.”

: “It seemed like he managed to wake up and made a report to the higher-ups. The guy inside this thing must’ve known how to get to the fourth floor. All I had left to do was pull him out of there and make him spill his guts.”

: Tatsuya is exactly right when he says the X-O is a Holy Lance mech… that’s because it is. It has the exact same moveset, down to the ability to seal Personas. The only difference is the naming - the sealing move on the X-O is called “Muramasa Copy”.

: I should mention that this fight also re-uses the Hitler/Holy Lance theme from Innocent Sin, because at this point they’re not even trying to make it seem like they’re not just rehashing Innocent Sin…

: The Holy Lance mech is weak to Nuclear this time around, and this is why we need Nova Kaiser. I should mention that Nova Kaiser stops the battle music during its animation because Satomi Tadashi apparently decided that Persona wasn’t enough of a Jojo’s reference as it is.

: The mech uses mostly gun-based attacks, including this one… which for a writer seemingly obsessed about guns, Satomi Tadashi got entirely wrong.

: The M249 and the FN Minimi are made by the same company, and the M249 is based off the Minimi, but they are effectively two different guns.

: Anyway, three Nova Kaisers later and the mech is dead without ever using Muramasa Copy. That shit’s bad game design anyway - it’s fine when you have five characters and chances are it’s going to hit someone useless, but with just Tatsuya it just makes the fight drag out.

: Tatsuya levels up, but we don’t get to distribute his stats.

: “The driveline shorted out and smoke started rising from all over the mech. The scrap iron hatch opened and the pilot jumped out. He tried to draw the gun at his hip, but the tip of my sword in his face was enough to get him to behave. The young man on the other side of the fence had already vanished.”

: “I pushed my blade forward the tiniest bit. The tip sunk into his forehead, and a line of blood traced down his nose.”

: “The man held up both hands. While keeping him in my peripheral vision, I maintained my stance and smoothly moved around him towards the elevator, all the while my blade remained against his forehead.”

: Wait, what? Isn’t Tatsuya supposed to be a master swordsman or whatever? Wouldn’t he know that having the blade against the guy’s forehead isn’t going to do anything? It’s not like the katana is going to cut through the guy’s skull, especially not from being right up against it.

: “He groped one-handed for the elevator button, and after a moment, the door opened. My blade still against him, I walked in without hesitation, while he bent back and revolved into the cage back-first.”

: I’m also not sure I understand the positioning here. Tatsuya must be in front of him, but then why would the guard need to turn around to go back-first into the elevator? None of this makes sense.

: “I kicked him in the chin. Momentarily knocking him senseless, I grabbed the nape of his neck, made him stand up, shoved his face into the button panel and stole the automatic handgun off his hip.”

: If there’s anyone reading this who by some chance does choreography for theater, I’d like to know what this would look like because what Satomi Tadashi is describing sounds anatomically impossible, or at least very awkward to do.

: “When I released the safety and pulled back the slide, I found that one of the bullets had already been fired. I ejected the shell and let it roll towards the floor.”

: This… also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The guard fired his gun once, didn’t rack the slide to release the empty cartridge… and then immediately turned the safety on. None of this makes even the slightest bit of sense.

: “I was just aping Maya, I should’ve been able to handle this weapon alright. I pressed the muzzle up to the back of the man’s ear.”

: I’m aware the line is not grammatically correct, but that’s exactly how the translator has it.

: “I grabbed the nape of his neck and made the man stand in front of the doors. If this was a trap, he’d be the one getting shot for it. When we passed the third floor, the number 3 on the panel’s floor number indicator started flickering. Several seconds passed, and the doors opened. It looked like we had reached the fourth floor.”

: “When I made him guide me to where Shiori was, the man stopped in front of a room that looked like a research lab. While I was at it, I might as well find out who they are.”

: “Without a word, I pulled back the gun’s hammer.”

: “Is he the boss?”

: “Tatsuzou Sudou… Tatsuya Sudou’s father and the man who screwed my dad over. If my memory served me right, even now he would still be the foreign minister.”

: “I got it. He would be able to use the cops, the mafia, the mass media and facilities like this as he pleased. By all appearances, it was a safe bet that Tatsuzou was ‘his’ favorite errand boy.”

: Uh, what? That’s not at all what we just saw.

: “Its blood-red hair was long as a shroud and cloaked its face from view. Its overall form looked human enough, but its skin color was difficult to describe beyond that it was clearly not of this world.”

: It’s dark purple. You can describe that in two words. It almost feels like Satomi Tadashi wrote this not expecting to be a video game, like he walked into the Atlus offices one day and everyone went “Surprise! You were writing for a visual medium the whole time!”.

: “If it were so inclined, the talons on both its hands could easily tear through the lab table on which it was restrained along with the men in white standing on either side of it. It looked like it had been sedated or something.”

: “The men in white seemed to have noticed my arrival. They backed away several steps, but somehow, they didn’t seem too surprised. There was no one else in the room. A horrific premonition skittered up my spine.”

: The radio crackled. “I have to defeat the demons!” Shiori yelled. “No Shiori, you are the demons,” the radio responded. And then Shiori was basically Yaksini.

: “On the chart the process of Shiori’s metamorphosis into a demon was documented via a series of photos. By deliberately allowing a Persona to take over, they transformed her into a demon.”

: “It seemed like this was an experiment to change a person into a demon by swapping a demonic archetype sleeping in the Collective Unconsciousness with a human consciousness.”

: “As he squealed like a pig and crumpled, I grabbed the narrow-eyed man by the collar and slammed him onto the operating table.”

: “I put pressure on the narrow-eyed man’s throat with my left arm and pressed the muzzle between his eyes as I shouted.”

: Well you see, his name is Satomi Tadashi and he was subsequently let go from Atlus for what I am now convinced were a number of very good reasons. Hopefully he’ll rot in the same window seat as Hashino, where he belongs.

: “Where the hell is he?!”

: Here’s what I hate about this. Remember back in like, 2012 when they announced DmC as the successor to Devil May Cry, and it was just Tameem Antonides being shit and making Dante an edgelord, and absolutely everyone hated it? That’s basically what this is.

: “The narrow-eyed man pointed a finger trembling with terror and oxygen deprivation at the inner door. I wanted to kill him. All these bastards should die. I couldn’t stop myself from putting more strength into the arm holding him by his throat.”

: This is like if they tapped Andrew Allanson to write a Persona game. I hate this shit.

: I’m not gonna lie, I was really tempted to shut the game off, claim my PSP died and the memory stick was unsalvageable, and then go back to The Silver Case.

: “The narrow-eyed man’s eyes popped open, and his tongue lolled out as he gasped for breath. He tried to peel my arm off with both hands, but what did he think he could do when he was that weak?”

: Let me just say this. There are definitely times when this kind of thing is appropriate. Games very, very rarely take that opportunity when offered, and it generally sucks.

: But this? This is dumb. Tatsuya is going Hotline Miami on a couple of guys over some cop he’s known for all of two days and has only the minimum of emotional attachment to.

: “I returned to my senses, and when I turned around, Shiori was collapsed on the floor, convulsing, and trying to pull herself upright. The middle-aged man had reached out to the desktop computer and unlocked the lab table.”

: “When Shiori murmured those otherworldly words and rose to her knees, the room temperature dropped in an instant. With a sound like a whistle, a scalpel-sharp, freezing wind began to whirl around us.”

: “The middle-aged man kept frothing at the mouth as the blood flowing from his leg froze over. Even that spray blew into the violently spiraling wind like glittering diamond dust.”

: I’d like to pause for a moment and talk about Ithaqua. Ithaqua is basically a Cthluhu mythos fan character, written by a friend of H.P. Lovecraft’s by the name of August Derleth.

: August Derleth is the one who coined the term “Cthulhu Mythos”, and wrote a number of what are effectively fan novels set in the same universe as Lovecraft’s stories, though Lovecraft himself did read them and approved of them.

: It’s strangely appropriate because this entire thing feels like a fanfic - not to knock Derleth, who I believe won a multitude of awards for his writing - rather than something written by the original author.

: Speaking of which, August Derleth had a biography written about him where they confirmed he was either gay or bisexual, and now I’m wondering if anyone has written a gay romance story set in the Cthulhu Mythos.

: “With a feeling of despair, I stared up at the completely changed Shiori from behind as she floated into the air. ‘What do I do…?’”

: “The narrow-eyed man, or Ozuki as he was called, pointed at the big tank next to us with his eyes, as i was pinning him down. Right, this guy said he was in charge of administering anesthetic or something like that.”

: They call it the Xbox 360 because when you see it, you’ll turn 360 degrees and walk away.

: Ithaqua is an easy fight even if you’re not on Easy. She’s weak to Fire. Sure, she has ice spells - but if you played Innocent Sin, Tatsuya probably has 99 Dexterity and does not give a fuck.

: Her most annoying attack is Life Drain, which does around 100 damage and heals her for the same amount. Fortunately, she was taking something like 400 from each Agidyne. Anyway, for the next dialog bit, imagine Shiori making unintelligible grunting noises between Tatsuya’s lines - I’m cutting them out.

: “When I tackled Shiori to the ground, I sliced open the thick anesthesia pipe creeping through the floor with my sword. Liquid gas blew out from the pipe and splashed all over Shiori. Baring her fangs, Shiori tried to stand. With deadly precision, she slammed into the pipe with all her strength.”

: This… also makes no sense. He’s describing the stuff being a liquid and Shiori being affected by having it “splash” on her, but then it’s a gas apparently?

: “Ozuki, who was trembling in a corner of the room, turned the tank’s valve shut. When I glanced at the middle-aged man, I saw he was frozen to death with a gruesome expression of manic delight.”

: “Ozuki came up next to me and looked down at Shiori. He also glanced at the middle-aged man’s corpse, but he averted his eyes in a hurry.”

: “If the middle-aged man hadn’t undone Shiori’s bindings, I might have run away with my hatred and killed Ozuki. Sure, he participated in the experiment that put Shiori in this state, but he also gave me a hint on how to put her to sleep.”

: This seems like bad writing, and it is… but there’s a reason for it. Ozuki is a reference to a character in SMT IF by the name of Otsuki, who is basically a joke boss. Otsuki winds up dropping an item you need to fight one of the major bosses. His entire shtick is that he refuses to believe demons are real.

: The more I read about SMT IF, the more I want to play it, because it has a lot of similarities to Persona 1.

: “Shinjo… or rather, Kandori. You said he was just ahead, right?”

: “I’ll be back.”

: “I left Shiori behind and headed through the door Ozuki pointed out, the one that lead further inside. Takahisa Kandori. I knew the name, if nothing else. I could have sworn that Yukino and her friends killed him three years ago during the Mikage-cho incident. And yet, he was here.”

: Hold the fuck on! Time out! You just called Yukino by her first name, despite referring to her by her last name every other time! I don’t think this is the translator fucking up.

: “No way it’s a coincidence. That JSM thing must be the core of this lab’s research; it’s the only way they could be manipulating rumors and increasing Jokers on such a large scale. I guess for the New World Order - or whatever they’re called - the more Jokers the better.”

: That’s also true for Yusuke.

: “When I went out through the door, the hallway continued with similar research labs on either side of me, with matching doors. Eventually I reached the end of the hallway and approached a unique-looking steel door.”

: “When I stood in front of the door, I heard Eikichi’s indistinct screams. It sounded like he got captured and dragged here. He was probably being used as a hostage to threaten Maya and the others.”

: “You’re still a kid… I’m disappointed. You can’t handle a company if you lose sight of your goals so easily…”

: “This voice must be that man Kandori’s.”

: “Allow me to teach you how to cast them aside.”

: “By the sound of things, Eikichi was in danger. Judging by the location of the voices, Eikichi was to my right and Kandori to my left. First of all, the door right in front of me must be between them. The door’s hinges weren’t on this side, which meant it opened outwards.”

: “Adrenaline raging, I saw the situation around me unfold with grim desperation. My senses were so honed I felt like a radar. I could see every movement clearly, and every noise was clear as a bell. Immediately next to me, in the corner of my right eye, I saw Eikichi crouching down, and behind him, a security guard was pressing a gun to his head.”

: “In the huge room before my eyes, there was a large apparatus like a revolver cylinder. Countless rows of test tube-like tanks filled with a bizarre sticky black goo lined up all around it. In front of that machine, Maya, my older brother, and the others were surrounded by security guards who had guns trained on them from a stair leading a level above them. God dammit, I told you so!”

: “Based on everyone’s relative positions, I got that Maya and the others were on the third floor, while Eikichi, Kandori, the security guards and I were on the landing on the fourth floor leading into an atrium. After that, my body moved before I could think.”

: Remember how you had that scene just minutes ago where Nyarlathotep is trying to goad Tatsuya into murder, and he doesn’t kill that guy, and now he just says “fuck it” and kills a guy. Yeah.

: “I’ve heard that when another target jumps out in front of someone suddenly, they’ll be confused for an instant about which one they should shoot. I ended that guy before he could come to a conclusion.”

: Clearly the message Tatsuya took away from that was that it’s perfectly fine to kill people so long as he doesn’t choke them out, and as long as they’re not a reference to SMT If.

: “I immediately straightened again and turned past the door. A man in shades with a flashy scar on his face pointed a handgun at me, which was still trailing a faint line of smoke from the muzzle.”

: “Not at all shaken, the corner of his mouth floated into a shallow smile. If you blended cynicism with fatigue, affectation with caprice, and nihilism with an excess of talent, you’d probably end up with a man like this. This must have been Kandori.”

: I’m gonna skip ahead a bit, because the game re-plays the exact lines from when we did this as Maya and at this point the update’s long enough as it is. Everything is exactly the same, except Tatsuya describes the action parts.

: “It’s clear that the Persona Kandori bore was the incarnation of ‘him’. He almost completely erased the presence of his Persona, just like I did. I didn’t notice him until he was right under my nose. Fury flowed through my veins, and I was completely awash in hatred.”

: “I was burning up.”

: “It is not because it reflects the light of the sun; it’s because it is embraced by darkness. The deeper the darkness, the brighter its light shines.”

: “My field of vision was narrowing.”

: “Maya Amano, too, will inevitably fall into darkness. You, too, must become a black sun.”

: Here’s our last boss fight of the scenario, against, uh…

: The original translators called him “Capricious Takahisa Kandori”, which sounds a lot less weirdly horny.

: Kandori is immune to practically everything, and the only thing that will work on him is Tatsuya’s shitty physical skill.

: He still has Eternal Black, which reduces Tatsuya’s remaining HP by half instead of simply being a massive Curse-element nuke.

: The best thing he can do is waste turns casting Shadow Force, which obscures your HP and SP values. The game will turn the ?'s red if you are critically low.

: Crawling Chaos is the attack that sucks. It doesn’t hit particularly hard, but it will cause Mute almost every time it hits. This is why we needed those Ohnusas - without them, this fight becomes unwinnable. Why?

: Because Kandori has Diarama, which he’ll start casting once he’s below half HP. Diarama can easily out-heal Tatsuya’s physical attack, and can almost out-heal his physical skill.

: Several dozen rounds of punching Kandori in the dick later, and he’s dead. This fight is one you definitely do not want to do on Normal, because on Normal I would have almost certainly needed to stop and recover SP.

: “How do I turn Shiori back to normal!?”

: “I scythed my blade to the left but couldn’t pull back, so I shoved the pommel forward with my left palm and aimed a stab for his upper lip.”

: “I’ll give you a hint.”

: “Kandori tilted his face out of the way, and when my blade grazed his ear, he grabbed it with his left hand. All I had to do was pull back, and it’d cost him his fingers. He gave me a broad, natural smile.”

: “However, even when I yanked it with all my strength, my sword didn’t move a centimeter. It was like it was caught in a vise.”

: “Creation is the synthesis of contradictions. When difficult and conflicting things coexist and become one, something new is born.”

: “The hell does that mean?”

: “It means that both you and I are merely actors playing our roles. However, there is nothing degrading about this. The process is essential to the result.”

: “Shut up! You’re just an errand boy!”

: “Hmph… if you wish to save Shiori Miyashiro, seek out a suitable place for her. Assuming, of course, that you suppose you’re capable of obtaining all of her contradictory values at once.”

: What I’m getting from this is that we have to bring Shiori to the dump, or maybe to a tire fire.

: “While I was staggered, he leapt light-footed over the railing and jumped down to the floor below.”

: “Think it over long and hard as you play your little games.”

: “Kandori looked up at me, baoding balls in his hand held aloft, then passed through the door downstairs and disappeared.”

: In case you’re curious, Kandori apparently carries a set of baoding balls - this is something he did in Persona 1, but you’d never notice it due to how low-res everything is.

: Baoding balls are an alternative medicine thing from China. They’re small metal balls which you’re meant to move around each other in a circle with one hand. Supposedly there are health benefits to doing so, but in reality it’s a bunch of jangly key man bullshit that relies on the same junk science as acupuncture.

: If you’ve ever seen Steel Ball Run (aka Part 7 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure), the steel balls Gyro uses are basically giant baoding balls.

: “That shades-wearing asshole jumped me in the parking lot… I’m such a loser.”

: “Don’t worry about it. You’re a great guy. More importantly, I need to ask you for a favor, man-to-man…”

: “That’s right, there was no need for him to worry about something like that. I owed him so much myself that a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to pay it back.”

: “What is it? Tell me anything, man.”

: “Don’t tell anything to Ma- I mean, Amano about how we met here or what we talked about. You and I met for the first time back there. Got it?”

: “Looks like you got your reasons. Got it, man. My lips are sealed.”

: “I could just picture Maya asking Eikichi all about me. I wanted to cut off as much information about me and the Other Side as I could.”

: “But you know, Suou… if talking it out would make you feel better, I’ll listen. I dunno if you can count on me, but…”

: “This guy… he hadn’t changed at all. He was a scatterbrained idiot, a narcissist, and the most kindhearted and reliable guy I’d ever known. From the depths of his heart, he was completely single-minded and completely good. I would absolutely keep my word. I remembered the last words he told me on the Other Side.”

: “Got it. I still got things to do. I can’t see you off, but make sure you get back to the parking lot soon.”

: “Yeah, sure thing. Thanks again, Suou! Be careful out there.”

: “Eikichi clapped my shoulder and left. I’d probably never see him again. So long, Eikichi.”

: “I turned around to face Ozuki. I didn’t have time to immerse myself in sentimentality.”

: “Me and those other people set that guy just now and the other inmates free. They might take you to the Nanjo Memorial Hospital or somewhere. If you’re with the, you’ll come in handy. Will you cooperate with them?”

: “I crouched down next to the completely transformed Shiori and stuck my hands under her arms to test her weight. Looks like I could manage carrying her out.”

: And thank god that’s over. Playing through Tatsuya’s scenario is honestly a chore - I really didn’t want to do it, and then I got halfway through and REALLY didn’t want to do it.

: Next time, we’ll do the Abandoned Factory as we return to the actual game and not a shitty visual novel.

[Timrod]

Summary

: The Abandoned Factory is… actually quite short if you’re not doing the mapping sidequest. Not gonna be a lot of content this update, which I’m fine with after how bad Tatsuya’s Scenario was.

New Persona: Stymphalides

Origin: Greece

First Appearance: Devil Summoner

Birds of prey with brass wings that can fire their feathers like arrows. Killed by Hercules after they attacked him.

: Before I went in, I fused Stymphalides for Maya. This was a mistake for two reasons: the first being that Stymphalides has a weakness to Gun, the second being that by having Zanma, we unlocked The Spell That Kills Katsuya. We’ll see that in just a bit.

: You might ask why I wanted it, and the reason is for what it can potentially mutate into. On a side note, the PS1 translation has his name as “Stuparideth”. No, I did not make that up.

: I also cashed in Gullinbursti and got Njord for Katsuya.

: The shipping containers here are disproportionately huge. I mean, this one container looks to be somewhere between three and four times the height of a person, when in real life shipping containers are maybe 8 to 10 feet tall.

: “Hey… why do you hate them so much?”

: “…”

: I didn’t skip anything, it goes from Katsuya’s line directly to the mech shooting at the Taiwanese guys.

: Like I said, that’s a huge fucking container.

: “They knew they were being bugged. That phone call was a trap to kill us along with the Mafia.”

: In my head, I had this picture of Baofu knocking on Tatsuzou Sudou’s door and saying he’s the phone repairman without even having a disguise.

: “What!? So then, Baofu… oh crap, we have to tell him!”

: “Worry about yourself. I’m sure he knows…”

: Here’s the map of the factory. It’s much smaller than Innocent Sin’s, but still has a lot of empty space.

: If this was a modern game there would be an achievement for doing that, but we actually can’t get to the boss if we do that.

: Shoggoths are common enemies in the factory. You might notice that Baofu isn’t in the party - without him, our negotiation options are extremely limited.

: In particular, Shoggoths suck because they can poison and also possess. Thankfully, we have a bunch of healing items left over from Tatsuya’s Scenario.

: Agrippa (the guy with the big blue head) is also here and very annoying. He nulls magic, and so it’s usually better to just run from him since again, we cannot negotiate.

: This fight showcases a localization failure: the demon in the back is simply called “Demon King” despite very clearly being Oda Nobunaga. His name is “Dairoku Tenmaou”, which means “Demon King of the Sixth Heaven” and is basically the Japanese Buddhist equivalent of Mara.

: Nobunaga took “Dairoku Tenmaou” as a nickname because of course he would. This also shows off my first accidental use of The Spell That Kills Katsuya.

: The Spell That Kills Katsuya is a fusion spell called “Low-End Breaker”, which is performed using Zanma and any Light spell. It was in Innocent Sin and was actually fairly useful in that it would always target the lowest-level enemy.

: In Eternal Punishment, for some fucking stupid reason, Low-End Breaker targets the lowest level character in combat - and this includes your party members. Katsuya is the lowest level at 34, so he gets hit with it every time.

: We come to the first big empty room, which I spend several minutes in running around to fill in map squares.

: For an “abandoned” factory, it clearly hasn’t been abandoned long. That made sense in Innocent Sin due to the workers evacuating because of the demons spawned by the rumor about the liquid waste facility, but makes no sense in Eternal Punishment.

: Shortly afterward, we wind up in Conveyor Belt Hell. If you want to complete the map, you have to make a minimum of three full laps of this place - it took me more because I didn’t have the map up. I only have one monitor and have to record in full screen.

: The locked door is fairly easy to find, but we don’t have the password.

: There’s a hole right near the locked door, which we can use to go to the floor below, which is big and empty and serves only to inconvenience you.

: What I didn’t realize is that it’s easier to get the conveyors mapped after you change them, so I wound up going through twice to get both loops.

: There’s a second hole in the conveyor loop that brings us to the other side of B2F, where the password is. I’m not sure what the significance of March 26th, 1975 is.

: I know it’s not Satomi Tadashi’s birthday (he was born in 1970), isn’t Kazuma Kaneko’s (he was born in 1964), and isn’t Masayuki Doi’s (1976).

: You can also find a Sumaru Magazine here, which you can use to buy more soundtrack music at Giga Macho. I don’t know why I’m even mentioning this.

: Pattern B changes the direction of the upper belts to allow us access to the boss area.

: I decided to clean up the map a bit first. As you can see, the only way back to the start of the belt maze is a third hole trap. We have to do this three times. It sucks.

: I got all the way through this, made it to the boss room, and then realized I had left exactly one tiny square of map all the way at the start unpainted. Fuck.

: And now we can move on. Trust me, the reward is actually worth it this time - especially given that this is way less annoying than the lab or Smile Hirasaka.

: Baofu has finally done it. He has become anime. He’s gonna be the fuckin’ Hokage.

: Baofu just took out a guy dual-wielding pistols with coins. Why the fuck did we not get anything like this in Persona 5, where they had the graphical quality to make it work?

: He slowly gets up and kinda shambles toward Yung Pao, in a manner that I imagine would look a lot like that scene from Yakuza 0 in the prison in 3D.

: This fucking rules.

: I knew it was suspicious that a Taiwanese guy gave a shit about Japanese baseball. Remember back when we met Nanjo, and I said there was a cut that was a dead giveaway as to who Baofu is?

: That’s because we met Baofu in person in Innocent Sin in that same spot. It happens during Tatsuya’s flashback in the bomb shelter.

: “No way… a prosecutor…”

: Yep. Kaoru/Baofu is the only character in the entire Persona series to be a cop, realize being a cop sucks, and then stop being a cop.

: Yes, I know Adachi exists, but he doesn’t count.

: “Five years ago, there was an accident where a couple - a prosecutor and a secretary - died while traveling in Taiwan…It wasn’t a trip, nor was it an accident… the Minister of Justice covered it up. I didn’t know…”

: “So what was it, Baofu? Was this to avenge Miki Asai…? Or…”

: “Shut up, Suou… you don’t know anything…”

: “You knew your tap was found… you knew this was a trap. You made us stall them so you could kill him.”

: “I-Is that true…?”

: “Is that what you had in mind all along…? To use us…”

: “So, what are you gonna do about it, Suou!? Just stay outta my way!”

: At first, I thought this argument kinda made sense. At least with Persona 2’s setting, people definitely know the Jokers were a thing and that there were guys walking around with giant tanks full of the embodiment of sin. You could prove this in court, as weird as it sounds.

: Compare that to Persona 5 where Sae essentially would be walking into a courtroom, going “Your honor, this kid would like to confess to being in the magic brain dimension that only a handful of people can actually get to and which no one can get to anymore because it stopped existing” and yeah, it makes sense.

: But then you realize that Baofu is proof the entire justice system is corrupt and in Tatsuzou’s pocket and uh… yeah actually it doesn’t make sense anymore.

: Baofu fires his gun, apparently at Katsuya.

: Enter Not-Hitlerbot, now in green.

: This fight is an absolute pushover, even on Normal. Everyone but Maya has some level of gun resistance, and gun attacks are all this thing has.

: Not-Hitlerbot 2.0 is weak to Electric as opposed to Nuclear, probably because of how difficult Nuclear attacks are to get in this game. Only a handful of Personas learn them naturally, and most of the ones that do are mutation-only.

: Maya can also throw in some damage due to her capped-out Dexterity and the fact that Not-Hitlerbot doesn’t resist Almighty. It resists almost everything else.

: This time around, the boss gets a Muramasa Copy off. It did hit Nanjo once, which admittedly sucked - except that Nanjo’s sword is Electric-based.

: I wasn’t convinced Maya was going to survive, because the boss’s 30mm Artillery move (which we saw in Tatsuya’s Scenario, the movesets are identical) was hitting her for like 70% of her HP.

: The Spell That Kills Katsuya is now The Spell That Kills Baofu, which sucks because Baofu carries this plot on his back. Seriously, how many times has Katsuya been plot-relevant up to now?

: “I know you wouldn’t… it’s not your style…”

: Ah yes, the infamous Adell Dodge, used in place of Disgaea 2 having an actual plot or character motivation.

: “Ha… maybe… maybe not…”

: If I was writing this, Baofu ABSOLUTELY would’ve ended Yung Pao before Katsuya even had a chance to speak. In fact, I might just do that. Let’s save it for the end.

: It’s the cruiser he uses to bring all the guns and secret science base equipment to people. Let’s look at our rewards for the mapping sidequest before I bring this to a close.

: Another Grydyne card. Not bad. But…

: We also get two of every buff. Next update, I’m going to make sure to fuse some Personas with these for faster boss kills before we take on Eternal Punishment’s take on the zodiac temples.

: And now, here’s how I would have written that scene.

: “Five years… it still wasn’t enough time to make me forget. See ya in hell…”

: Baofu shoots Yung Pao in the head, twice.

: “Hold it right there, Saga! …Dammit. I’m too late.”

: “You don’t know anything, Suou. What did you think was going to happen? We’d arrest him? And then bring him to who? The Ministry of Justice, which you know just as well as I do is in Tatsuzou’s pocket?”

: “Or maybe we’ll take him to the police station on the other side of town. You know, the one where the top brass are part of the New World Order.”

: “But-”

: “Oh, you’re right. We could take him to Tokyo and have him prosecuted there… and play directly into Tatsuzou’s hand. He wants us to make the New World Order and all of that dragon and kegare crap real. Or were you not listening to a word Shimazu said?”

: “…”

: “Exactly. I did him a favor. If I didn’t kill him, did you really think he was going to survive the night? Do you really think Tatsuzou is going to stop hunting him?”

: And now, a line I wouldn’t actually put in but absolutely should.

: “You fuckin’ idiot. This is why a decade from now, I’m gonna have a semi-illegitimate daughter with a government researcher and you’ll be working for a dumbass bitch with a tramp stamp of a dog.”

: “You know what that says? It says ‘raw dog my ass’, Suou. It says ‘raw dog my ass’. That is what it says. You absolute goddamn moron.”

[Timrod]

Oh shit, that’s right, I forgot. That picture I got Salty Vanilla to do several updates ago is done.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we head off to the Nichirinmaru, I tried to fuse some new Personas. Unfortunately, most of the good ones are just outside our level range, but I did make Vivian, who… only kinda sucks.

New Persona: Vivian

Origin: England

First Appearance: Soul Hackers

Lady of the Lake in the legend of King Arthur. Gave Arthur Excalibur and was briefly Merlin’s lover before going mad with power and imprisoning him.

: We want Vivian because she has a Ma-Dyne spell, but also because she gives an AGI bonus. This makes her ideal for putting a buff onto, which is exactly what I do.

: There’s a rumor demon on the Nichirinmaru, but it apparently only exists on Elly’s route - so we’re not doing that, I guess.

: With this, Ulala should go before Maya pretty consistently and be able to buff her damage. Even though we’re well past the halfway point of the game, Makakaja doesn’t really show up until the mid-50 level range.

: “This is taking too long…”

: “That’s why I must go. It is important for me right now to actually witness that power… It’s not something I can just inherit.”

: There’s a line here I screwed up recording. The line is “Yamaoka… the young master has grown up well. It is all thanks to you and his friends…”

: There’s also a shot of Nanjo’s speedboat I missed because I was tired as shit while recording this.

: Oh look, it’s Chizuru. Cool how she shows up here after kinda dropping off the face of the Earth.

: “They want the Seal removed right away… they’re getting a little impatient. Shinjo, no Kandori. There’s been something I wanted to ask you. Why would someone as great as you be controlled by one such as Tatsuzou?”

: This is exactly how the text is in game. She is literally walking up to Kandori and going “Shinjo, no Kandori” as in “Shino, no Kandori for you, go to bed.”

: “Do you despise him…? Because you are… a woman…”

: “You should exterminate the old order and become leader! You must lead us…”

: “It doesn’t matter to me…”

: “Your only concern is with them and… that boy of the Paradox… why are you so obsessed with them!?”

: “Ha… you underestimate me…”

: There’s an explosion, and the screen shakes.

: Nanjo apparently has a cannon mounted to that speedboat.

: The ship’s on fire. Is this going to be a thing like the Aerospace Museum? Nope! This is Cutscene Fire.

: Katsuya and Maya shoot one guard each, meaning that now everyone in the party has killed a man.

: “He doesn’t look it, but he’s quite violent… once he’s enraged, there’s no stopping him.”

: Oh right, Ulala hasn’t killed anyone yet.

: Like most dungeons, the Nichirinmaru is very big and very empty.

: The enemy list is almost identical to the Abandoned Factory’s, so for the most part during recording I was going for cards rather than EXP.

: There’s a handful of items, but only two of them matter: there’s a material card near the end and an HP incense that I fed to Maya.

: The first floor is a giant loop that leads to the elevator, which is how we access the rest of the dungeon.

: Both 2F and B1 have staircases that lead to hidden areas on the first floor… most of which have nothing in them and are there just to make the mapping sidequest harder.

: There’s a Velvet Room on the second floor, which I use to make a new Persona for Katsuya.

New Persona: Takshaka

Origin: India

First Appearance: Innocent Sin

Naga king in Indian myth. Fought against humanity until being captured by the devas and effectively exiled.

: Takshaka is another Persona I fused in hopes of getting a mutation. He’s pretty garbage until Max Rank, when he learns Grydyne.

: I spend a while mapping this whole place out, even though at this point we really don’t have much of a reason to.

: B2F has a single staircase that goes to B3F, which is the transition between the first map of the Nichirinmaru and the second map.

: This introduces a few new enemies, including Rakshasha, Orthrus, and Leviathan. You can’t see it, but Katsuya now has a negotiation with Baofu where he starts interrogating and then Baofu punches the enemy as the screen goes black.

: From B3F, we go back up to the other side of B2F, which has a dumb gimmick involving holes around an optional cutscene room. We need to fall down both to map the whole thing.

: One of these holes leads to a material card that makes a Persona who is actually pretty good… if we weren’t one level off from being able to fuse it.

: Instead, I fuse Huracan for Baofu, as he hasn’t had a new Persona in forever. Huracan is absolute garbage.

New Trashsona: Huracan

Origin: Mayan Myth

First Appearance: Innocent Sin

Mayan creator god associated with storms, fire, wind, and lightning. Name means “one-legged”.

: On paper, Huracan doesn’t sound terrible… except that you need to hit Rank 7 to get anything that isn’t a shitty physical attack. Worse, Heat Wave actually fucked me over during a boss attempt. Let me explain why that is.

: Heat Wave and Vile Lightning (which Nanjo has) make a really, really shitty physical-based fusion spell. It does piddling damage, costs a shit-ton of SP, and is generally worthless. The problem is that I have fusion spells set to use automatically if they happen, and due to Baofu being the second-slowest character (with Nanjo the slowest) it kept going off by itself.

: I can also use Heat Wave and Bufudyne on Ulala to get Icy Fury EX, which is exactly the same thing. I set the game to auto for a bit and just had Baofu and Ulala use that spell.

: The good news is that we unlock a mutation I was looking for. The bad news is that Vivian got hit with it - meaning we lose our only source of buffs.

: After climbing a back staircase to the second floor again, we get the boss warning. The Nichirinmaru is a little tricky in that you can’t finish mapping it until after the boss.

: This guy blocks the way to the next dungeon. We’re in the area right before the boss, but I had to go back to map out a single square near the start of the dungeon so let’s do that cutscene room.

: “Hmmm… where are the Undersea Ruins?”

: “Right around where Amano is standing.”

: “No time to waste… let’s move.”

: Yep, that’s it. There’s also some optional dialogue:

: “Ma-ya, remember that party? It was on a cruise ship just like this… a ship is a ship, but I never thought I would have to go on a ship like this…”

: “Looks like they were plotting something evil here… you just wait… Tatsuzou…”

: “The combination of modern technology and sorcery is where New World Order excels. How fanciful for them…”

: And now it’s boss time. Behind the scenes, I put Tensen Nyannyan back on Ulala and put Vivian on Maya, even though Vivian has bad compatibility. It doesn’t matter.

: Tatsuya straight up kills both guards. So much for “I can’t play into ‘his’ hands” or whatever.

: “You fool… this world of sin and no ideals is false. Therefore, it must be punished.”

: “You’re wrong. I’m the only one who must be punished…”

: By “punished”, he means “married to my boyfriend”.

: “Such a pity… a great pity. In today’s world, how many young people are there with your sense of purpose… come join me. Together, we can create a world without man’s original sin.”

: Whoa there, buddy. You’ve got the wrong villain. That was Maruki that wanted to do the whole Psientific Model Eden thing. You’re Shido, not Maruki.

: “Fool! You don’t know what you’re talking about, old man!”

: “Don’t be ridiculous! Who’s gonna humor an old man’s delusions!”

: “Your crime is a serious one… are you aware of the penalty? Punishment by death or life imprisonment!”

: I’ll give Tatsuzou one thing - he is a master of not giving a shit.

: This fight is kinda RNG-centric. You can win pretty quickly with fusion spells… which we don’t have - provided they don’t Muramasa Copy the people doing it. My strategy is probably better.

: The reason it’s RNG is that if all the mechs decide to use their cannon, they can fuck your party up.

: My strategy works like this. Maya’s first turn is spent buffing Nanjo. Nanjo then unleashes Vile Lightning for somewhere around 500 damage per enemy.

: Maya’s second turn is spent buffing herself, and then casting Malaquadyne for around 300 damage. This is preferable to using a fusion spell because it’s a lot harder to fuck over with Muramasa Copy.

: Speaking of which, Nanjo gets sealed, so Maya has to carry the rest of the fight with Malaquadyne. Ulala does nothing but heal, and Katsuya and Baofu exist. Both of them will be much better in the next boss fight.

: We kill two, and the last one self-destructs for around 80 damage to the entire party.

: The party is definitely overleveled at this point, largely due to me having to rank up all the new Personas.

: “Why did you come…!?”

: “Leave me alone! I can do this myself!”

: “…”

: “Tatsuya…!!”

: There’s some optional dialogue while we’re here.

: “The kid pushed himself too hard…”

: “Tatsuzou escaped, but we can’t just let those guys heading toward the ruins go… Amano, let’s look for a way after them.”

: The guy sitting in the door has left. I had a friend once who called NPCs like those “door whores”. You just don’t see a good door whore anymore.

: There’s only really one thing in this entire back area worth mentioning, and that’s a monster chest that has a Garudyne card in it.

: The screen shakes and there’s an explosion in the background.

: Wait, what. Tatsuya found a fucking mech? Where the fuck did he find a mech?

: Tatsuya just… jumps off the boat. The mechs apparently double as submarines. Why did Kandori need a submarine when he has a bunch of submersible mechs? I mean, I guess the submarine theoretically holds more sin-goop, but still.

: Here’s what I want to know: who is it that’s piloting the submarine? We know it can’t be Maya after the whole Silver River bit in Innocent Sin.

: We’ll do the Undersea Ruins in another update. They’re short, but there’s an annoying demon rumor thing and I have to grind the new Personas we’ll be using for the boss there.

[Timrod]

Summary

: “…!”

: This is something I’m genuinely confused by. This game has had pretty good cutscene direction thus far, but it spends way too long panning on this shot of… a flat featureless JPEG.

: I thought “Maybe it’s a problem with my PSP’s video output” since I know the PSP has had brightness issues before, but… no. It’s not. Here’s the same shot from the LP of the PS1 version on the archive.

: Nope. The emulator shot is a bit more detailed, but not by much. It’s still a flat featureless JPEG. I have no idea why they didn’t touch it up - unless they knew they weren’t going to release it outside of Japan by this point and realized it wasn’t worth the effort.

: Time for a little bit of optional dialogue.

: “And to top it off, he’s smart as well… he’s destroyed their only way out. He’s got some mad skills…”

: “I can feel it… Kandori is here… young boy… he’s a dangerous man. Don’t get ahead of yourself…”

: I’d like to point out that Nanjo is 20 years old. Tatsuya is 17.

: The Undersea Ruins suck. They’re so bad that you don’t have to map them for Salam - this is because of the sheer number of hole traps. Let me post the map so you can see.

: We get the “boss is near” cutscene pretty early in, except there’s a hole blocking us from going straight there. Instead, we need to take a roundabout route that I wound up taking twice because of the items in it.

: South of the boss area is a set of stairs that starts the actual route to the boss room. There are a couple of hidden rooms like this with monster chests in them.

: This one has a couple of recolored Rakshashas that die in one turn and give up a Rakukaja card. The Undersea Ruins is the first place you can get buffs if you didn’t get them from the sidequest.

: For the most part, the way forward is a straight shot.

: This room is the first one to have a hole in it. The hole drops you by the Velvet Room, and means you have to run all the way back here. This dungeon really could’ve used some shortcuts.

: Whateley is a new and very common enemy who is another one of the “demons based on real people who reflect or null magic and are weak to physical” genre. You can’t make a pact with him unless you’re playing Elly’s route, and this is why I’m playing on Easy.

: Seriously though, that was one of the few good decisions Hashino made - the idea of having attacks go off individually instead of setting up the whole party. It’s annoying as hell to go from my typical spell setup to all physical and back every time one of these fuckers shows up.

: We can still negotiate him away using “Cynical People”, a technique between Nanjo and Baofu. It’s about the only non-Elly technique that works.

: In the hallway with the hole, I encounter the only Aeshma I ran into during the first run of the dungeon. Aeshma is the source of this dungeon’s demon rumor.

: Unlike the previous ones, Aeshma is a (relatively) rare spawn that you have to encounter a minimum of three times: the first to make a pact, the second to get a rumor that there’s a treasure room, and the third time to get a rumor that Leviathan can open the treasure room.

: This room has a hole trap just to the left of the box, but Miracle Eggs are a good SP restore and we might as well grab them.

: This part of B1F has a fork. We want to take the left side, I think the right side is another hole.

: There’s a somewhat hidden room in this area that we definitely want to stop by, because it’ll let me fuse new Personas now instead of waiting.

: This chest has two Succubi and a Crowley. They all resist or reflect magic but are weak to physical.

: Perfect. Unfortunately, we can’t put that on one of the Personas I want to make due to it being a mutation, but this ensures we’ll at least have a source of buffs once we mutate Vivian.

: There’s another hidden room here we might as well grab because it’s basically free.

: Shortly after this is a room that… I think my screenshot tool fucked up on because I was trying to alt-tab to pull up the map. It’s a hole maze that leads to a couple of decent items - including a Mediarama card, which I want.

: The easiest way to do this is… you can kinda see in the other screenshots that the floor has a faintly visible grid on it. Each hole is one square, and so we worm our way around to get to the stairs.

: The Orichalcum is used for weapons crafting, the Holy Light card is kinda meh, but the Mediarama card will allow me to replace Tensen Nyannyan.

: Near the boss room is a second staircase that goes down a path to an Item Breeder. If you’ll recall, this was the reward for the bullshit Tsuchinoko quest we ran into but didn’t do in the sewers. So what’s it do?

: It’s basically a free incense, provided you have an incense to use it on.

: I intentionally fall down the hole to the Velvet Room and fuse Nodens. This was a mistake and I reloaded my save almost immediately.

New Persona: Nodens

Origin: Celtic Myth

Eternal Punishment Original

Celtic healing god with a magical dog that healed people by licking them. Had a shrine in Gloucestershire, UK. No physical depictions of the original god have survived, but historical evidence points to him being a misinterpretation of the Greek god Ares. The name was later co-opted by Lovecraft as an entity who opposes Nyarlathotep.

: I think I prefer the god with the magical healing dog, because you just know there was somebody in ancient England who tried to make a god with a magic healing cat.

: Let me tell you why this is a bad idea. The next boss is Kandori, and Kandori has four Not-Hitlerbots with him that (as we already know) are made of Gun damage. Nodens is weak to guns.

: High Pressure would be really nice because that’d give us access to God Hand, a fusion spell from Innocent Sin that fucked up pretty much everything.

: On second thought, coming to the Velvet Room was a mistake because everything sucks. Let’s take a look at Ildanach, for example.

: No weakness to Gun - that’s good… except all his damage is Light-based, and Kandori is immune. Fuck.

: Armaiti is the only thing we can fuse that doesn’t suck… except we need Tetraja to avoid Kandori instakilling everyone. I have to do it because Stymphalides is a piece of shit.

: While grinding, I get incredibly lucky and get demon rumor one of two from Aeshma after about thirty seconds.

: Rumor two of two comes two encounters later. I cannot believe my luck and save immediately. I should note that you don’t have to spread these for them to work.

: It takes me longer to find a Leviathan than it did to get the rumors from Aeshma. Let’s do this and see what we get.

: The treasure room is basically a tower defense maze made of damage floors, because we haven’t been through enough annoying bullshit in this game yet.

: There are eight chests. Five of them have high-end skill cards… which for the most part are completely pointless. By the end of this dungeon, we can fuse Personas up to level 50. At that level, it’s uncommon to see Personas that don’t have a -dyne or ma-dyne spell. Plus, we have buffs now and that’s what we want to blow our skill card slot on.

: The other three have what turns out to be materials you can use at Padparacha. So, are they worth it? Let’s just skip ahead a bit.

: We can use it to make two useless weapons: the Super Nova and Kusanagi’s Sword. You can also make the Hihi-Irokane armor, but you need a second Hihi-Irokane for that.

: What I’d like to point out is that we’re maybe one dungeon from getting the materials for an ultimate weapon. Now, how do you get a Sun Stone (or a Moon Stone for the sword)? Well, uh…

: You have to buy them. From the store. For almost a million yen each. To upgrade ONE WEAPON. I think this is the most useless sidequest reward I’ve seen since YIIK. Fuck this shit! And you know what the worst part is? Now we have to go through the entire dungeon again.

: Oh, look, it’s this exact cutscene again.

: A seal controlling a dragon sounds like something you’d see in The Silver Case. Kusabi would track the seal down and try to offer it fish so he can pass it off as a horse at the racetrack.

: “Dragons, a huge energy flowing underground… now, by releasing the Kegare with the dragon, this world will be obliterated… right now, Gozen and Tatsuzou are headed towards Torifune… you’ve lost.”

: “I’d like to tell you to chase them, but… I’m just a peon… I can’t just let you return. Please honor me by being my opponents.”

: The fight starts with four X-2 mechs and Kandori. Kandori starts the fight guarding, and won’t break his guard until the mechs are almost dead. Like the ones we’ve fought before, the mechs are weak to Electric damage - but there’s one key difference in that they do not have the AOE gun attack the others did.

: They have 2500 HP each, and I have Ulala buff Nanjo to make it faster. I also have her buff Baofu, who is a surprisingly competent caster for a character whose stats I have no control over.

: Kandori activates before the mechs die, presumably because Nanjo and Baofu were hitting everyone on the field, including him. Now it’s time to use Armaiti.

: If you’ll recall from Tatsuya’s Scenario (and also Persona 1), Kandori has Eternal Black, which halves the entire party’s HP. It’s a lot more effective against the main party because he has a couple of new moves he didn’t have against Tatsuya that he can combo with for a potential instakill.

: Tetraja outright blocks Eternal Black, and pretty much nullifies his one gimmick.

: We kill the mechs, and now Kandori unlocks his full moveset, including what is normally his win condition.

: Wheel of Time is a full-party Almighty attack that starts out weak, but gets 10% stronger every time Kandori casts it… which is, strangely enough, a perfect inverse for how the Wheel of Time series works. Wheel of Time started out strong and then took a nosedive with every subsequent book.

: Kandori also has Myriad Arrows, which is why we couldn’t use Nodens. Unlike the later games, Myriad Arrows does Gun damage in Eternal Punishment. Keep in mind this is on Easy because I forgot to change it over after grinding out the demon rumor.

: I don’t really mind because there is a cheese strat you can use that makes this fight a joke. There are two Personas - one being Prince Shotoku (who we saw earlier) and the other being Hoenir - that reflect or null everything Kandori can possibly do except for Wheel of Time.

: The strategy here, assuming you have Tetraja, is pretty simple. You keep Tetraja up to block Eternal Black, have someone cast Mediarama every turn, and then do what damage you can.

: If you don’t have Tetraja, you can use an item called Silver Manisha that does the same thing - chances are you probably have a few (I had 5) from demon drops. Whateley drops them as a last resort.

: “Can you break the chains of fate?”

: I thought about this whole scene after I recorded it, and I realized that honestly, bringing Kandori back like this was kind of dumb. I appreciate all the Persona 1 references, but it just… doesn’t work.

: In Persona 1, Kandori had character development - he goes from an amoral Patrick Bateman type who wants to end humanity and presumably do the Thousand Year Kingdom of God bit to realizing that maybe destroying humanity was a dumb idea and dying.

: This whole thing is really just a rehash of Persona 1, and it doesn’t really make sense. I could understand if it was a thing like with Hitler, where it’s really just Nyarlathotep wearing Kandori’s skin, but no, this is supposed to be the same Kandori from Persona 1.

: It also REALLY doesn’t make sense that Reiji has zero involvement in all of this. Reiji was an underdeveloped character in Persona 1 and absolutely could’ve used the screen time to maybe show how he changes from a kid whose only motivation in life is killing his half-brother to now, where he kind of feels sorry for Kandori.

: “Ha… Hurry, before it’s too late…! This place won’t last much longer…”

: Kandori goes about as close to Geese Howard as you can get without being dropped from a giant tower in the middle of Tokyo.

: Everyone just kinda files out.

: “I regret leading you to this end…”

: “No… I was happy just to be with you…”

: And this is why once you have a mech, you never, ever step outside of the mech.

: You know, I bet Shido’s cruise ship thing had an emergency submarine the whole time, we just never found it because Morgana sucks.

: “What exactly are you hiding… can’t you tell us by now?”

: Actually… why doesn’t he? Nyarlathotep is clearly like two steps from ending the world again, you’d think at this point it wouldn’t make a difference.

: “Please… don’t get involved with me…”

: Clearly, he wiretapped Jun. Either that or he used the bugs he has in the police station.

: “He had Nanjo research you. He really hates to lose…”

: “Amano went through a lot, just to see you… she was even marked for death by a Joker because of that idiot there.”

: “Haven’t you done enough all by yourself…?”

: “I’m not… your little brother…”

: Well, I mean, obviously. Baofu’s last name is Saga, so…

: Of course, we know what he means thanks to us having done Tatsuya’s Scenario. Speaking of which, I looked it up, and the third part of Tatsuya’s Scenario is almost entirely superbosses.

: “Easy there, Suou.”

: “If I talk… will you back off…?”

: “Depends on what you say. Right, Amano?”

: Next time, we’ll go to the Alaya Shrine, which I’m guessing is going to be a recap of Innocent Sin. I honestly don’t know.

[Timrod]

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.”

: Is it being stabbed with a spear?

: " ‘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.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we continue on to Ameno Xibalbafune, there’s an item we can get that will make mapping it suck a lot less. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever in the game itself that you can even do this, or how you’d even do it - it’s obvious it was made to sell strategy guides.

: In W-Slash/Double Slash, there’s a girl who will tell you which Wang Long dragon you are based on your birth month. I don’t know if you can use this to solve the puzzle in Aoba Park or not.

: Naturally, the solution is not to give her a month at all, but instead to spout Lovecraft-inspired gibberish. The password is different depending on what version you’re playing. In the original Japanese release, the password is “IA IA HASTUR” in Hiragana. Unfortunately, I did try it and it doesn’t work in the translation hack.

: In the US PS1 release, the password was changed to “HASTURCOMEFORTH”. The patch accepts either one, so long as it’s in English.

: We get no clue as to what the password does.

: If we go back to Kismet Publishing and check Maya’s desk, there’s a box that wasn’t there before.

: Unlike Persona 5 where he had his own signature skill, Hastur is kinda trash in Eternal Punishment. Yeah, he repels all magic types… except all of his skills are a single element and most demons are heavily resistant to Dark damage.

: I threw a Grydyne card on him because I figure if we’re going to have him around anyway, we might as well get some use out of him. With a Dx Card, he’s at 75 dexterity, which really isn’t bad.

: You might think this is the item we were looking for, but no. There’s a second layer to this.

: If you equip Hastur to someone (everyone has at least Good compatibility with him, except Baofu who has Great), it unlocks a secret rare demon fight in Area 4 of the Bomb Shelter. Again, this only happens if he is EQUIPPED, not just in your party’s stock.

: The first time you run into this encounter, you get an automatic Persona Chat.

: THAT’S what we’re here for. Golden Honey is a re-usable item that prevents all random encounters, regardless of what level they are. It’s effectively an upgraded Estoma. It took me maybe 10 minutes to get, and will probably save us triple that mapping out Ameno Xibalbafune.

: Now, I was fully intending on going to Xibalbafune… except that I found out there’s a rumor we can spread that allows us more dialog with the Persona 1 cast… among other things. That’s why this turned into side content.

: If we go to the Jolly Roger, there’s a rumor we can spread about affinity readings - this is what I thought the ones we did earlier were. There’s a chart for how these work here.

: Let me explain what this does. You can get affinity with a number of people, many of whom only give bonuses on a second playthrough or in the EX Dungeon.

: As the guide above mentions, you get asked six questions, with each combination leading to a specific character. Naturally, I did every character of importance, starting with the most important.

Innocent Sin Cast

Jun

: Tatsuya immediately confiscates the genie’s crystal ball and turns it into his secret boyfriend communication device.

Lisa

: In the back room of the genie’s office, Jun glares at Lisa. “No, we’re not doing this again, he’s my boyfriend.”

Eikichi

: I think a lot of this was left over from the PS1 version, because it sounds kinda stilted.

Ixquic

: Ixgri is probably another Mayan god, but I don’t feel like looking it up. I wish Ixquic had been a party member.

Persona 1 Cast

Yukino

: I wish Yukino had been in this game, because a Yukino-Baofu contact would probably have been the best contact in the game.

Nanjo

: Having affinity with a party member boosts the damage of any fusion spells they participate in. It doesn’t do anything with Nanjo unless you’re doing the EX Dungeon.

Elly

: Elly is still infatuated with Jihei, and it is canon to the Persona 1 LP that he marries her.

Reiji

: You know, I bet this would’ve worked if he had tried this on Lisa in Innocent Sin. “Legendary gloves? Nah, you need this set of legendary steak knives. They cut through demons like butter.”

Maki

: Weirdly, being friends with Maki doesn’t get you a discount at Hiiragi Psychotherapy - you have to have affinity with the owner for that.

Brown

: There is, in fact, no bonus to luck for having affinity with Brown.

Toro

Tamaki

: Remember when Satomi Tadashi was merely horny for idols, and didn’t have a shitload of bad opinions? Those were better times.

Takami Saeko

Eternal Punishment Cast:

Baofu

Katsuya

Ulala

Tatsuya

: Tatsuya is one of the easiest people to get affinity with (you get it by answering “Yes” to everything) and also the most useful if you played Innocent Sin, since I think the damage bonus to fusion spells is percentage based and Tatsuya has the highest Dexterity next to Maya.

Misc NPCs

Sudou

: If anyone ever invites me to a charity stream, my stretch goal will be doing a Tatsuya Sudou cosplay and lighting a copy of Persona 5 on fire.

: From what I’ve read, having affinity with Sudou (or any of the other bosses, which include Kandori, Chizuru, Capitain Shimazu and Ginji Sasaki) makes you do more damage in their fight if you have it and go to a second playthrough.

Igor

The Count

: The Count is another good evil fourth-dimensional alien hell-bent on humanity’s destruction in disguise to have affinity with, because it gives you a 20% discount at Time Castle.

Sumaru Genie

: And that’s it. There’s a few other ones - you can get affinity with most of the store owners and with Kandori or Chizuru, and if anyone wants to see those I’ll do them, but I thought these were the best ones.

: Next time, Ameno Xibalbafune.

[Timrod]

: This is gonna suck. What we’re going to do is duck into the subway very briefly, and then leave. Doing this opens up a bunch of stuff you otherwise wouldn’t have access to until after Xibalba 2.0.

: Wait, isn’t this just the thing from the end of Resident Evil 2, where you take a train in the sewer to the secret Umbrella lab?

: “Hmph, who’re they kidding… they set this thing up and tried to make a rumor come true, they must be insane…”

: “Um… Amano, are you sure you can drive? Perhaps I should, instead?”

: Oh god, what. They’re letting Maya drive the…

: “Hey, Tatsuya, I found some drinks. Want one?”

: Baofu and Tatsuya are probably both screaming on the inside.

: “…”

: We all know what he’s really trying to say - it’s because he didn’t defeat his shadow in a mobile game that never saw the light of day outside of Japan. No, really.

: “Don’t have to say what you don’t want to… besides… what I want to know is what are WE like on the ‘Other Side’? We were there, right?”

: “My brother is pretty much the same… Ulala got scammed by a con artist… I only know you spread rumors on the net…”

: “So the ‘Other Side’ is not that different…”

: “… Is it hard… being an adult?”

: “Huh?”

: “No… never mind… forget about it…”

: “What about you…?”

: “…”

: “It’s the same… there’s nothing good. The pain just keeps growing…”

: “Hmm…? Amano, it’s a dead end… please stop.”

: And now, we’re going to turn around and head back - specifically to the Bomb Shelter, because there’s a sidequest we very much want to pick up… even if it sucks.

: This dipshit was the one who tricked the party into going into the Bomb Shelter in Innocent Sin. In this game, he just tells us about Kudan.

: Before we continue, it is VERY, VERY IMPORTANT that if you are playing along, you immediately fuse new Personas for everyone - preferably physical ones.

New Persona: Ouroborous

Origin: Unknown

First Appearance: Devil Summoner

Symbol of a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, symbolizing a cycle. Can apparently ensure complete global saturation.

: The skills on the wiki are outright wrong. Let’s look at the real ones.

: Ouroborous learns Skewer at Rank 2, which does shitloads of physical damage. It can also learns Hieroglyphein, which does damage equal to its Rank times its Level. I put it on Baofu.

New Persona: Mahakala

Origin: Tibet

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I

One of a group of eight gods known as the “Dharmapala” in Tibetan Buddhism, representing wrath and destruction. Spouse of Kali. Co-opted into Japanese Buddhism as Daikokuten, one of the Seven Lucky Gods, and into Hinduism as Shiva.

: I’m gonna be real here, Mahakala sucks ass. The only reason I’m even considering him is because he’s physical and can mutate into Quetzalcoatl - who we used for the entire endgame of Innocent Sin and wound up maxing stats for.

: Mahakala went to Katsuya, and then my plan was to use Apollo on Tatsuya (since I was going to fuse something else for him anyway) and Armaiti on Ulala. This was a bad idea, because Armaiti has our only out of combat heal.

: Kudan spawns in Area 6 of the Bomb Shelter, so let’s grab the letter and map while we’re here.

: Well, that’s not great. This is Odin, who is one of the rare demons that can spawn in this area. I was completely unprepared to fight him.

: You see, Odin has Mudoon. He’s another one of those “Nulls magic but weak to physical” Personas, and uh… yeah, this isn’t great.

: I’m gonna be real here, if this was on Normal I’d have had my ass kicked. My plan was to use Nodens and Armaiti to do God Hand, which does Almighty damage and SHOULD penetrate his defenses… except it doesn’t. He nulls Almighty.

: I manage to recover using the 99 Beads and 50-someodd Balms of Life I have sitting around, and Tatsuya gets off enough Gigantic Fists for the kill.

: This gets us Odin’s material card. I’m going to wind up fusing him before we go into the subway.

: Odin is a pretty good Persona, and has Great affinity with Baofu. I’m going to toss him on Baofu to replace Hastur. He also has one of the shittiest fusion spells in the game.

: I save immediately, and then try to rank up Ouroborous and Mahakala… forgetting that I left Nodens on Maya. This was a mistake.

: Meet Kudan. A Kudan is a monster from Japanese myth that is a cow with the head of a human that is born, gives a prophecy that usually involves shit going down, and then dies.

: On its first turn, Kudan does the absolute worst thing it can do. Prophecy is a spell that hits your ENTIRE PARTY and REDUCES THEIR PERSONA’S RANK TO 1.

: Most guides recommend savestating around this, and I reloaded my game to try it again… only to have it do a turn 1 Prophecy the second time as well.

: At least Prophecy auto-kills it. The reward is still worth it.

: This gives us three of the best accessories in the game.

: First up is the Synchronize Gear, which halves the amount of times you have to use a Persona for it to rank up. This lets us get Nodens back up much faster.

: Second is the Mutation Gear, which gives a huge boost to the chance of getting a mutation. In theory, we could use this to cheese a boss fight coming up… if I had overgrinded like hell.

: Third is the Adjustment Gear, which CUTS SP USE IN HALF. I would give this to Baofu for Odin, but he’s still got the Agility Source on.

: Back at the subway tunnel, there’s some optional dialogue before we go in. I won’t be showing much of the tunnel anyway, apart from one demon rumor.

: “Adults, huh…? What are adults, anyway?”

: “Time is cruel… it just keeps moving on and on, and before you know it, we all just look like adults. Gotta do this, gotta do that. Sooner or later it all gets left behind somewhere… all the pain and dreams when you were a kid.”

: “As a child I believed adults had strong beliefs and could rule themselves. I wanted to be an adult like that… but, as you age, you start to see many things… there are times when you become confused.”

: The subway tunnel doesn’t have much of interest inside. It has an Agility card, the only Estoma card in the game, and a weapon material you can get through a demon rumor.

: The only real “puzzle” is this bridge, which… why does this exist? This is underground!

: The switch is located a few steps away.

: We get a rumor for the “Legendary Blacksmith” sidequest, which we need to do I think to get the legendary weapons.

: The rumor spawns this kid behind the Alaya Shrine, who opens a Mansearch thing for the blacksmith.

: This is the rumor we’re looking for.

: It opens this bridge that leads to a weapon material. Again, why the hell do they have drawbridges underground? What is this, Dwarf Fortress?

: There’s a few new enemies here that were also in Area 6 of the Bomb Shelter, including Pucel - an annoying piece of shit that spams Myriad Arrows - and Ares, who I believe has a full-party instadeath spell.

: There’s something I should point out, by the way: the Item Breeder we found earlier can be used to duplicate weapon materials. That’s probably what you’re going to want it for.

: As soon as I had the Rainbow Piece, I turned on the Golden Honey (see the last side update if you haven’t) and booked it. This dungeon is a lot less annoying with no encounters.

: “All we need to do now is release Joka to cleanse the Kegare of the world by the hands of the 12 Dragons!!”

: It’s kind of hard to see, but the Tenchu soldiers are doing the one-armed Nazi salute.

: “Various religions! Tribes! Desires! Values! Was human history laden with these, a history of ‘Sin’!!? The masses, blessed with materials, lost their ideals. They don’t examine themselves or even try to atone for their sins!”

: “We must provide a dream of reconstructing a new future and cleanse the rotting world! This is the ‘Punishment’!! And the Chosen Ones will know!! The future of salvation stands before us!”

: “Sugawara…”

: “Yessir…”

: “I leave the Torifune to you. We will ascend to Utena with Gozen. Prepare the Petit Deva…”

: I know deva is a buddhist term, so my guess is that utena is as well - but I have no way of finding out because searching it just gives me thousands of results of people talking about Revolutionary Girl Utena.

: “Yessir… it shall be done.”

: “Do not worry about your frailty, my friend. Gozen is very happy with your work. Your wish for immortality will be granted.”

: “Ah…! My loyalty has finally been rewarded…”

: “Well, considering it can fly with a city on top of it, it better be…”

: “This is rumored to be a ship of a god or aliens, right…? Don’t you think that they would’ve set traps or something?”

: “This ship, called ‘Xibalba’ on the ‘Other Side’, makes bad thoughts real… you shouldn’t think of anything bad.”

: “How do you know…?”

: “People’s fear… insecurity… hopes… it borrows the form of rumors, it is the incarnation of the unconscious world… I think that’s why Philemon said thoughts would become reality in the unconscious world…”

: “Then all we gotta do is think pleasant thoughts… piece of cake…”

: “No… this is his domain… don’t think anything.”

: Don’t think anything, like how they completely recycled Xibalba. The difference, however, is that Ameno Torifune is MUCH, MUCH larger than Xibalba was. Here’s the map for Ameno Torifune, compared to the map for Xibalba.

: “Yow! Hot…! What’s going on!? Serizawa! You thought of something bad, didn’t you!?”

: “I’m sorry. It was something that happened previously… so… I inadvertently…”

: This is something Satomi Tadashi is going to go back on in a couple of minutes, when Tatsuya will outright say the whole “dungeon made of thoughts” thing is bullshit and it’s just Nyarlathotep fucking with them.

: It’s funny that the Innocent Sin cast solved this room in less than half the dialog boxes. Clearly, our party are not highly trained anime teenagers.

: “It’s no use talking about what we thought! So what happened on the ‘Other Side’, Tatsuya!?”

: “…I ran.”

: “A cool head will stave off the heat! …Is what Maya said.”

: I apologize for the blurriness here, but this is kinda what happens when you set a PSP to TV output mode. There’s a reason only the Go can do it, and why the Vita never could.

: Ulala falls flat on her face. I have to question how these are the same people we saw doing shit like covering each other in Kandori’s lab or killing all those guys on the Nichirinmaru.

: Welcome to Torifune, where every room is needlessly fucking huge. The first thing you want to do here is pop your Golden Honey and keep popping it when it runs out.

: That’s the one annoying thing about Golden Honey, by the way. It works like Estoma, where you use it and it lasts for a certain number of steps, rather than being a toggle.

: As for enemies, it’s mostly the ones from the subway tunnel… plus Pascal the Dog and Dominion. They’re generally less annoying than a lot of the enemies Xibalba had, but my plan is to grind a bit after we get to the first boss.

: The reason for this is that there’s a demon rumor I want to get, but the only demon you can get it from doesn’t show up consistently until after the first boss.

: B1F takes a few minutes to map even with no encounters, because it’s just that fucking huge. It’s still MUCH, MUCH faster than it would be with encounters on.

: B2F is a floor I absolutely do not recommend mapping without Golden Honey and/or a Pixie with Mediarahan on it (or a stack of Beads, which we have). The reason?

: B2F has unavoidable damage floors, which do a ton of damage. Just going over these two reduced the party from full health to under half, even for Maya and Tatsuya with their high magic defense. The damage floors are also not safe from random encounters.

: There’s a chest in one corner that poisons everyone, which I opened by accident. You know, just in case this floor wasn’t annoying enough.

: Oh, and a monster chest I had a very close call with. This one is pointless if you’ve done all the mapping quests, because all it gives you is a Dekaja card. It’s worth doing if you don’t have one.

: The best strategy for B2F is to have the golden honey on, and then simply walk over all the damage floors and reduce the party to 1 HP, as damage floors can’t kill you. Once you’re done, simply heal up with a Bead (or a Pixie with Mediarahan) and continue on.

: B3F is the world’s simplest teleporter maze. You can go directly south to go to the cutscene room, or south-east to go to a second teleporter that brings you to an item, then to the cutscene room.

: Here, we encounter one of the new gimmicks that Xibalba didn’t have: one-way walls. These really don’t matter much unless you’re doing the mapping sidequest, and even then aren’t really that annoying as long as you have the golden honey. If I didn’t, they’d probably be fucking infuriating.

: “Is this the work of that ‘Nyar-something’? …Isn’t it weird!? Why does he kill his own men…!”

: “It’s proof that the New World Order isn’t aware of the secret of the Torifune… ‘He’ thinks of humans as mere pawns… they probably don’t even know of ‘his’ existence. This ship… him… neither one is anything a human should mess with…”

: There’s some optional dialog in here as well.

: “Grandma said if I wanted to help people, I had to do it without thinking of the consequences… now I finally understand!”

: “Our hearts are created by multiple layers… normally, our ego is viewed as the ‘self’, with our unconsciousness lying beneath. Below this, each society has one culture, family, etc… the ‘collective unconsciousness’. These abysses spread out infinitely…”

: “Think of the normal unconscious as a sea of unconsciousness all humans share… the tiny island floating in that sea… that’s ‘ego’. If it is the people’s rumors that created this ship, then you can call this Sumaru City’s ‘unconsciousness’.”

: Oh look, Satomi Tadashi conveniently wrote Mementos a full sixteen years before the release of Persona 5. I’m surprised Hashino had the restraint to not make Mementos a literal sea where Morgana turns into a boat.

: B4F is another small one-way wall maze. It’s not really much of a maze, as you can see.

: B5F is the developers just kinda phoning it in. It’s a very big room with nothing in it - there’s a couple of chests with incenses and a teleporter that sends you to a small room in B4F you can’t otherwise access for mapping purposes, but that’s pretty much it.

: Baofu fights the urge to invoke standard police procedure for saying the forbidden phrase, as established by Kusabi.

: “It HAS been a while since we’ve been underground. If there was a Velvet Room, we could rest there…”

: If you’ve read the Innocent Sin LP, you’ll remember this exact room from about this point in Xibalba.

: “Really…!?”

: “It’s awfully suspicious… that Nyarlathotep guy decides whether or not to make our thoughts a reality, right? Why does he give things so conveniently?”

: Uh, he didn’t. At least, not the first time. The first time, both doors were traps and Tatsuya had to save the party.

: “I don’t know what he’s up to, but if I can use it, then I will…”

: This is another cutscene I don’t like. It would’ve been way better if this time around, the party assumes both doors are traps. Maybe Baofu and Katsuya open them without going inside to see what happens.

: Instead, the party fucks off so that Tatsuya can have a scene with Maya.

: “This is… the burden of sin… you don’t have to worry about me…”

: This is a scene I knew about ahead of time, and I was going to have Salty Vanilla do a version of the infamous “You fake hedgehog!” scene from Sonic Adventure 2, except with Jun as Sonic and Metal Jun as Shadow.

: Not a fan of this. I liked how Innocent Sin did it, where it didn’t translate the Cantonese words because it really didn’t need to, and it gave you the same experience that the rest of the cast (none of whom speak Chinese) would have.

: Hell, this would have been a fucking perfect scene for Baofu to be in, given that he speaks Chinese and all.

: Tatsuya rushes forward and tries to decapitate the fake Jun. No one impersonates his boyfriend and gets away with it. The sword audibly bounces off, which is a hint for the upcoming boss fight.

: “Damn!”

: Instead, they all disappear and take Tatsuya with them.

: “What did you say…!?”

: “Ch…! We fell for it… come on! We gotta find him!”

: Optional dialogue time.

: Just past the cutscene room is an elevator. It gives you the option of going to B7F or B8F, but Tatsuya is on B6F and I want to get him back before we do anything else.

: B6F has two material cards we can’t use because we don’t have Tatsuya around - one is the Urdarbrunner, a material card for making Skuld. I don’t believe I’ve logged her in any of the other games (though we did log Verdandi, who was Maki’s ultimate Persona) so let’s do that.

New Persona: Skuld

Origin: Norse Myth

First Appearance: Shin Megami Tensei I (Sega CD)

One of the Norns from Norse myth, along with Verdandi and Urd. Probably the best girl in Ah! My Goddess. Name means “what shall be”, which is appropriate given her position of deciding the future.

: This is how bad the original translation was. “Heiros Glupaine” is Hieroglyphein. Skuld isn’t great as a battle Persona (though Makarakarn would be REALLY useful in the upcoming boss fight), but is a really good choice if you want to grind the casino due to that high luck stat.

: B6F is the first floor where Manannan can spawn. He has a demon rumor that will allow Ildanach to mutate, but we can’t contact him because only Tatsuya was above level 55.

: Also spawning here is our old friend Girimekhala. Let’s introduce him to God Hand, which we have again now that Nodens is Rank 8.

: Yep. If I had bothered to get an affinity reading for Baofu, those numbers probably would’ve been in the mid-1200s.

: Phoenix has an annoying instakill attack. Fafnir (in the back) just kinda exists, unlike in Persona 1. You might ask why I didn’t have the Golden Honey on, and that’s because I forgot we were too low-level to negotiate with Mannanan.

: Near the boss room is the Crimson Wing, which is the material card for Suzaku. This time around, the four directional beasts have a much better fusion spell that is basically designed to cheese the next boss fight… except we can’t use it. Suzaku is level 63, meaning we can’t fuse him without Tatsuya.

: We do, however, want to fuse Suzaku because he can be returned for a Legenbright, which is a material used for the legendary weapons.

: It’s time for another RNG-ridden shitfest of a boss fight. My first instinct was to equip Hastur, and it was absolutely right.

: The first two lines are exactly what Eikichi and Lisa say right at the end of Innocent Sin, in the final cutscene. Jun’s line has been altered.

: Another thing I considered having Salty Vanilla draw was Tatsuya asking Jun if he actually has a sword, and then Jun turns his bouquet of irises over and guns and swords start falling out.

: A gunshot rings out.

: “Ch… physical attacks don’t even scratch 'em!”

: This fight… kinda sucks. Remember in Innocent Sin, when we fought the party’s Shadows? That’s exactly what this is, except we’re fighting three of them at once. Now, here’s why this fight sucks.

: Eikichi has Mamudo. As far as I can tell, Mamudo will always hit unless it is nulled or reflected.

: By the way, this fight also plays a remix of the Innocent Sin boss theme.

: Case in point - Ulala and Baofu are the only two who null Dark at this point. There’s very little we could have done to prevent this, because despite being the absolute slowest person in Innocent Sin, Eikichi manages to out-speed the entire party.

: Theoretically, I could’ve still won this with Baofu and Ulala… except the boss has some other bullshit that we’ll see on the second attempt, including a move that would almost certainly wipe the party if I revived Maya. Let’s reload.

: On the second go, Eikichi’s turn comes up after Baofu, Ulala, and Tatsuya. I have Tatsuya use anti-instakill protection, and Baofu and Ulala buff the party.

: Lisa opens by buffing, which is one of the least effective things she can do with her turns. Apollo has Dekaja, but I don’t bother wasting turns debuffing.

: Katsuya hits Eikichi for almost 700 damage out of the 2200 or so HP he has.

: By the end of our first turn, Eikichi is down over half of his HP. The guide written by the translator claims that you should focus Lisa first, but in this case it doesn’t matter. Why? Because I put Hastur on Maya, and Hastur reflects everything.

: By our next turn, I have Heavy Rain and Blazing Burst set up. Unfortunately, something gets lost in translation and both wind up getting used on Lisa instead of Eikichi, when I only intended Heavy Rain to be on her.

: 950 damage. Granted, we’re still on easy mode, but that’s not bad at all.

: Blazing Burst hits for another 900, and Lisa is nearly dead.

: This is where the fight turns bullshit. Eikichi has a move called Bloody Divorce, which is an “inverse version” of his ultimate Persona’s signature spell, Bloody Honeymoon. Bloody Divorce is a Water-based skill that has a 30% chance of instakilling on hit.

: Tatsuya is weak to it, but Tatsuya is also a tank.

: This is where shit goes down a bit. Lisa uses a full-party charm spell. She can hit both Katsuya and Ulala, but only hits Katsuya, who dies to reflects. This causes him to lose his buffs.

: Jun uses a few turns to heal Eikichi, but we get him down. Unfortunately, we lose Tatsuya in the process.

: This is why this fight is bullshit. Tetraja only protects against dark/light based instakills, not against Bloody Divorce. The only real saving grace is that Apollo is immune to Charm, because if Tatsuya was to be hit by it, there’s a good chance that’d be a party wipe.

: Jun uses his signature move, Terror Fortune. It hits everyone in the party and charms on hit.

: At this point, I’m not too worried about losing Ulala because we can nuke Jun down. Fortunately, Ulala shakes off the charm immediately.

: I think what I really hate about this fight is how many ways it can go wrong.

: “I’m sorry…”

: “Don’t say anything. My little brother doesn’t lower his head for little things like this…”

: " No… The me of 'This Side", also feels the same way."

: “I see…”

: This update’s gone on pretty long, so we’ll do B7F and then end it.

: I immediately grab the rumor from Manannan about Ildanach - we can now mutate him into Lugh, who… honestly kinda sucks.

: B7F is another damage floor shitshow.

: “It’s called… ‘Petit Deva’. It’s written here.”

: We’ll do just that. The next boss requires a shitload of damage output. We could probably do it, but I want to do some farming first to see if I can get a legendary weapon.

: Next time, we’ll do the final floors of Ameno Xibalbafune. This will unlock Tatsuya’s Scenario, Part 3, which we will do for exactly long enough to get the cards we need.

[Timrod]

Summary

: I fused Suzaku, and then spent like 15 minutes grinding rank to be able to return him.

: We can take the Mansearch for 100 yen, but have to pay another 3100 to finish it.

: The bodyguard at Shiraishi will sell you a rumor for 100 yen that allows you to find the blacksmith.

: In case you’re wondering, the giant portal in the ground is where you exit if you use the teleporter out of Xibalbafune.

: This opens up the legendary weapons at Padparacha. The problem is that you still need demon rumors to make them good, and they require items that need annoying sidequests to finish.

: We missed out on two of the materials - one comes from returning Nezha, a rare demon in Aoba Park, and a second comes from successfully doing the Tsuchinoko sidequest in the sewer.

: I used the Item Breeder on the Akashic Ring to get a second one, since we’ll get a second Legenbright not too long from now.

: You can only make one Legendary Handgun, so I do that.

: We then complete the map. If you have the Golden Honey, I recommend turning around now and going to turn it in. Why? You’ll see.

: Salam gives us a shitload of tarot cards and two Fool cards. We just need one more to summon… something. In the PS1 version, you’d have to grind negotiations to get a fourth card, since the only other one you can get is from mapping the final dungeon - and by then, there’s no point.

: My capture software was shitting the bed here, there’s a “…” line shared by Katsuya and Maya with their “sad” portraits here.

: Well, I guess we know what happened to Sugawara. And now, an awkwardly timed cutscene.

: And there’s our next dungeon, where we finally find out what all that stuff with the shrine at the beginning of the game gets us.

: Most of this is recycled from Innocent Sin, where the same thing happened.

: Gotta love how you have this giant zombie thing shambling down the stairs, only to stop for a completely unrelated cutscene.

: “You’re kidding me…?”

: “What have they done!?”

: “Ch…!”

: What Was Sugawara isn’t a particularly difficult boss, just a very annoying one. In this case, we get bad RNG and start after he does.

: All of his attacks are physical, and all of them have a chance of inflicting a status effect - this attack is called Tentacle and is probably his worst one because it inflicts Shock.

: Baofu gets shocked, which fucks me out of being able to cast Mamakajaka and buff the party. What Was Sugawara also has a rather annoying gimmick: every turn, he heals for around 800 damage.

: Fortunately, he is VERY weak to fire, and we have the ability to set up Blazing Burst between Maya and Tatsuya. Blazing Burst does damage based on Dexterity, and both of them are maxed.

: In the next round, we go before the boss does. I get some buffs off, and then it’s off to the races.

: Then shit kinda goes downhill. The boss gets two turns in a row, which it uses to kill Maya and Baofu and shock everyone else.

: It takes me a bit to get everyone back up, but another Blazing Burst ends it even with the two full turns of regeneration the boss got.

: Tatsuya maxes out his Vitality (it was at 98 in Innocent Sin) and increases our Persona fusion level limit to 68.

: I’m not quite sure how Katsuya knows this, given that he never met Sugawara until now.

: “'It’s no good, it’s not budging an inch… we couldn’t land this ship even if we wanted to…”

: “What are we gonna do!?.. The city’s flying… at this rate, the dragon will appear, and the earth’s axis will rotate!”

: “As long as we’re alive, we can stop him…”

: “Tatsuya is right. We haven’t lost yet… we’re gonna bring this ship down the way we’re gonna bring down Sudou! Even if he has backup!”

: Maya looks at him. “You mean by spamming God Hand until it dies?”

: Tatsuya’s Scenario Part 3 is open, and we need to do it to get that last Fool card.

: Part 3 is some fucking bullshit. I will not be doing the entire plot of it in this update, because it’s got a lot of dialogue and two bullshit boss fights. What I will do is summarize the plot up to the point where I’m going to need to load this into the emulator - which I didn’t have time to do this weekend.

: “Look, I know she sucks, but I still want to help her because, uh… why did I want to do that again?”

: “You didn’t. To save this dumbass cop, you’ll need to venture… into HP LOVECRAFT’S ™ (R) DREAMLANDS and recover her twelve magic brain gems, only no one can go there because it sucks.”

: “Whatever. I’ll go get my fill-in mom, some lady who is only really auxiliary to the entire plot, my dumbass cop brother and a hacker and defeat… wait, this is just gonna be Snow Queen, isn’t it?”

: Insert that one Pop Team Epic meme here. Actually…

: “Wow Tatsuya, I can’t believe you’d shack up with a lady cop, which is weird because I am also a cop and you can’t stand being around me.”

: Then we meet this guy, who uh… something’s wrong with his face and he has a magic key he can jangle to open a portal to HP Lovecraft Presents: The Dreamlands.

: More pointless Lovecraft references. Randolph Carter is one of Lovecraft’s self-inserts.

: We then meet Lieutenant Zula, who is a cat. Zula tells us that we need to recover the 12 mirror shards recover Shiori’s twelve magic brain gems. The first one is on, uh… what’s his name again?

: Right, I’ll just call it Recolored Shoggoth, because that’s exactly what it is.

: Recolored Shoggoth has 12,000 HP and a number of instakill spells. It tends to stick to two skills: Asteroid Bomb (which does Almighty damage) and a weak physical attack.

: The strategy here is pretty simple: I set up God Hand and Blazing Burst, which does around 1700 damage per turn. Ulala is on heals.

: Recolored Shoggoth gives a piddling amount of EXP, which is kinda bullshit given that it has more HP and is potentially harder than a lot of the end-game bosses in the main game.

: For reference, I’m pretty sure you’re meant to do this after a lot of grinding on a run where you intend to do the EX Dungeon, but… yeah, I’m not doing that.

: This scenario kinda tries to tie Carl Jung in with Lovecraft’s Dreamlands shit, and directly states that Philemon and Nyarlathotep live there, but uh… yeah, no. Not canon.

: We then get sent to a visual representation of this song a recolor of the final dungeon. Here’s the map.

: Most of the towers work like this: you meet a demon, the demon asks you a question, and if you answer correctly you get a shitload of tarot cards and do not have to fight.

: Answering the first one skips the fight and gives us some stuff about Hinduism I think Satomi Tadashi copied out of a textbook.

: I should mention that the Golden Honey still works even in Lovecraft World, so we can simply skip all the random encounters.

: Unfortunately, this one we have to fight because he wants to give Maya a makeover.

: This fight is fucking bullshit and why I’m going to load the save into an emulator. Azazel has a number of bullshit Dark spells, including Eternal Black. He also out-speeds everyone so I can’t protect against it. But that’s no problem - he’s only got 3,000 HP and…

: And he absorbs magic. Of course he fucking does. Even worse, our physical skills do exactly nothing to him.

: Have I mentioned that he also has a full-party charm spell, and that he can hit Maya with it? Yeah. The game expects you to have post-game shit to do this, which is dumb because it is the only way to do a thing you’d have no reason to do on a second playthrough.

: Anyway, I’m gonna load this into the emulator and savestate my way through this because god fuck I do not feel like grinding any more this week.