Parallel Worlds: Let's Play Persona 2 and Persona 2!

I felt lucky when I actually got that screenshot on the first try.

The subway tunnels are straightforward to the point of idiocy. Narumi is in the southeast-ish "corner" of the city so all Maya needs to do is walk North and West. (Ironically, this strategy is strikingly similar to the progression on Katatsumuri in Innocent Sin)

The occasional random encounter makes this dungeon about 10 minutes long instead of 7 or 8. Even though PANTS needs levels (so we can summon better Personas), we can never have enough cards, plus his high level makes contracting a cinch for the next good while. We can still kill all of the NWO guys with no regrets, plus they're basically the easiest with no real affinities or elemental-weakness-hitting attacks.

At the bottom of the Torifune, Sudou and the still-living leaders of the NWO are all standing around, as he explains that the time has come to purify the world's "sin" by releasing the "Joka" with all of the Joker they collected. (I don't think this abysmal pun is stated so directly, but you know Atlus meant it)

The Joka, in case I forgot to explain this part of Wang Long, is the "evil" dragon that exerts bad influences over the other dragons/signs at arbitrary astrological times. It's bad for everyone and all of the dragons hate it. Theoretically all of them will burst out of the earth's ley lines in an attempt to kill it, which will ruin the planet's physical properties, like its rotation, climate, etc. and thereby killing everyone.

And to think, this crazy plan only took him controlling the media, most of the government, and correctly utilizing the actions of five super-powered and rather unpredictable adults (and one teenager who is even more super-powered and unpredictable). Of course, since he's been getting all of his orders from Nyarlathotep, he didn't really have to be that clever-just obedient.

Sudou leaves Sugawara in charge of operations down here, and of course we obviously have Kandori to thank for this "Petit Deva" thing.

Tatsuzou further explains that he's happy with the General's work and that Gozen will grant him immortality. Oh, he won't look quite the same afterwards, but it'll be a small price to pay, I'm sure. After all, he's kinda funny-looking in the first place.


Outside the entrance PANTS explains the history of the Torifune/Xibalba and its "rules." Ulala steals Maya's line again, saying to think happy thoughts, but he's got a better idea: don't think anything at all. They enter, and suddenly they find themselves in the old oven trap. Baofu blames Ulala first, but Tatsuya admits he thought of it because it happened on the "Other Side." He says that Maya told them "if you concentrate, even an oven is cool!" and they ran to the other end of the room. There's no time to waste!


Next time: The Golden Man With The Gun!
Also Next Time: Erin Go Bragh!

THE FEAR HAS SPREAD! Yeah this post is mostly an excuse to post that picture

I'll be writing up Torifune today or tomorrow, before I leave for DC on Tuesday.

I just uploaded all the pictures though, so if I somehow fail, (which I won't) then I'll still be able to do it sometime during the week. Sadly for eirikr, who isn't even here I couldn't finish the Celts yet. But they will be.

The Ameno Torifune is pretty much like the Xibalba, but with slightly better music (though you still have to turn up the sound and sit around to really hear much) and marginally more fun. It has the same shiny gold and futuristic laser aesthetic as IS' final dungeon. On B3, the first special room has a bunch of dead NWO soldiers inside, who were killed by traps (like Taurus' guys in IS).

These guys also turn suddenly whenever you rotate the camera, which is obviously intended to give the effect that they keep pointing the same direction, but they just look weird and freaky when that happens.

On B4 there's a small maze where lasers appear to block your path if you try to walk in the wrong places. It's so short I didn't even get a picture of it. There's also a teleporter, which leads straight down to B5. This leads to the Room of Damnation. It doesn't sound very safe, true, but there's nowhere else to go.

Katsuya thinks aloud, how nice it would be if there was a Fountain and a Velvet Room to rest at. So, like that scene in IS, they appear. Ulala and Baofu head into the fountain, and Katsuya to the Velvet Room, leaving Maya and PANTS to have a nice, deep and heartfelt conversation.

Finally, Maya gets to say something.

Like way too many "choices" in this game, this one does nothing. Tatsuya will mope on about how "this is the burden of sin," and that she shouldn't worry about him. Then something comes out of the wall.


PANTS swings his sword, but it doesn't do anything-they're impervious to physical attacks.

And with that, they take him away.

Anyway there's something I forgot to do when I had PANTS on the surface, and it's momentarily too late to do it now:

Without PANTS nobody is high enough level to make Mananan, which means we have no Maka Kaja for the next boss battle.

Oops!

It'd make things a lot easier, but everything will be fine even without him. What Maya can make, being the highest level in the party, is the persona Death Ankou. Ankou blocks Light (Holy) and Dark. Maya uses the Maha Magnus card that she got from returning Aizen Myouou on him, since the only real reason I'm making Ankou in the first place is because he's not weak to anything.

On B6 is more teleporters and a chest, which has the Material card Urdarbrunn. It's required for the persona Fortune Skuld, one of the three Norns in Persona 2, who I may or may not get around to making soon. (Verdandi and Urd can also be made, even more easily)

Finally, in the Room of Grief, there's a scene, which seemingly takes place at the Araya shrine.

The Metal Kids repeat the lines they said parting with Tatsuya at the end of IS/beginning of EP, then offer to end his suffering.

By stabbing him with a sword, of course. PANTS says he'll accept his punishment...later. The gold altar disappears and the battle begins.

The Metal Trio is usually considered the hardest fight in this game, because of the whole thing with multiple turns and more variety in move combinations. Metal Michelle has Maha Mudo, Bloody Divorce, and Aquadyne, but he shoots his guitar gun more than anything.

Metal Ginko has Foamy Lover (Lover of Darkness in the localization, but I don't like this name because it doesn't match the graphic as well), Maha Magdyne, Blow a Kiss and Taru Kaja. Tarukaja nearly doubles physical damage dealt in this game and doesn't go away without some sort of dispel. So it's really good, even if it only hits one target at a time (like in all Persona games after the first).

Metal Jun has De Kaja (the AI doesn't actually check for -kaja spells for casting it in this game, which means it often gives you free moves by using this instead of something useful), Terror Fortune (HUGE wind damage and chance of Confusion or Silence effects; extremely annoying and dangerous), Medirama and Wingbeat (all-hit, physical damage, very dangerous with Tarukaja). He also has the lowest health, making him by far the best target to kill first.


So Ankou and Hunab Ku smash him with the rock fusion. He takes almost 400 damage a turn from this, but with Maka Kaja it would do nearly 800 and take him down in three turns instead of 5-6.

With him down, the battle is much easier, with damage incoming reduced by quite a bit and the chance of truly crippling spell effects (because Maia Custom doesn't seem to be Charmable and is definitely immune to death) goes away. Apollo, Hunab Ku, and Il-Dana switch to the fusion Meltdown (Fire->Earth->Maragidyne) which crushes Michelle for 600 damage a turn, and does about half that to Lisa. With him down, it's just down to burning off the last bit of her health to finish off the battle, even as Ulala was charmed the whole damn time.

Katsuya tries to lighten the mood by joking to PANTS "I thought I taught you to hold a knife by the handle" but he's a bit surprised when his brother apologizes.

Unfortunately, now that PANTS is back, we're going to grind a bit. We don't need to, since the Personas I'm trying to get with this are really just for vanity, but with the brand new Mananan Persona, random battles that don't have Temperance Phoenix demons (which can be scared off quickly anyway by waving Maya's microphone at them) can all be annihilated near-instantly like this:

The other thing we need is to meet the Mananan demon, who can be contracted with the Baofu/PANTS combination. Mananan has a very interesting demon rumor...

Once PANTS hits level 58 it's time to hit the last floor, B8, then take the elevator back up to make a couple of Personas quickly. I was also waiting for Hunab Ku and Il-dana to gain Persona mutations, but when that didn't happen I decided to accept it and move on. It'll go faster by just grinding in the front room of Kasugayama with the Yellow Dragon affinity reading anyway.


The Ortyx material from Iwato makes Asteria, Ulala's "ultimate" Greek persona, who's being made mostly for Garudyne. She's not really that good, but she's not *bad* either.

Prometheus is Baofu's upgrade, and he gets the Medirama card because he's secretly immune to Dark as well (which doesn't display on his card for some reason), making him extremely useful. The small green bars indicate that I've used Incense cards to accentuate the stat in question.

In the control room on B8, a dying soldier explains why everything is wrecked.

General Sugawara has, apparently, been turned into a horrible monster. But first, the viewscreen shows an FMV for some reason. (I don't understand why they would have cameras positioned so inconveniently, but that's their prerogative I guess)

A large pillar of dark light appears in the middle of town, and a huge tower appears behind Seven Sisters.

Also, the rings power up and Sumaru City flies up into the air, once again.

PANTS tries to rally everyone, saying "it's not too late!" as Sugawara attacks.

Sugawara is weak to fire and has ridiculously low defense, taking substantial damage from everything, but just knowing this isn't sufficient to finish the battle, because he's got an unusual but extremely cleverly-fitting gimmick; the promised "Immortality" causes him to regenerate a large amount of HP each time he moves.


However, a Maka Kaja'd Tower Inferno, anchored by Il-Dana's Maragidyne, hits him for nearly 2,000 damage a round. Still, beating him takes a degree of coordinated face-pounding that isn't called for anywhere else in the game, where you can at least in theory win by attrition against any other bosses.


After he's weakened, the party forces him into the pit, where he'll never be seen again. Above them is a teleporter, which PANTS thinks he can fix for long enough for the party to escape the bottom of this ship so they can return to the surface and finally catch Sudou.

They reappear at the shrine, and head back into town, to see a huge new structure in the middle of Rengedai. Specifically, Honmaru Park...


But first, there's some stuff to do. Most importantly, talking to the Wang Long Fanatic at //...she asks what month Maya was born in, as always.



Next time: Sumaru Horror!

Well, it's true that the official is Michel (he refers to himself as such in this game, but I think only once, when you meet him in the Science Lab if you chose to go with Nate), but I went with Michelle here in the end mostly because Kishi was pretty much the only person to say anything either way. Eikichi's being somewhat effeminate (as musicians, at least fictional ones, tend to be), and I mean that in generally a good way, probably helps the overall sentiment.

At least as an american, I don't think I'd associate either name with "badass," particularly. Not that that's necessarily any sort of criteria either.

I know this thread hasn't been very request-driven, but for the record, I'm all for fusing up Verthandi, Urd, and Skuld.

...for the obvious embarrasingly stupid reasons.

Ia Ia! Hastur!

It's alright, I don't think your reasons are any worse than mine for who I like in these games. I just have to farm up another 500 Fortune cards, which I won't be able to do until late in the dungeon after the next one. Should be easy once I get there.
Oh what, now you want me to use the King in Yellow too? So demanding!

I worked on the next update, but there's not much to it (I screwed up one of the things I was going to do by not talking to a certain person before entering the subway, and besides that, the update is just going through a very short and easy dungeon and making some Personas). Unfortunately, the game is still not cooperating at all on Mutations which is pissing me off really badly. I don't know why everything came so easily on the first time I played this game, and now that I'm doing this it fights me so hard for every single thing I want to get.

There's a box at Maya's desk in Kismet, now. It contains a letter asking if she's AWESOME enough to be the owner of its contents, and a very special card.

The King in Yellow is the material for, obviously, the Persona Tower Hastur.

Hastur reflects Magic and is weak to Physical. So he actually kind of sucks. Fine in random battles, but terrible against most of the remaining bosses who will completely destroy him with all-hitting physical attacks.

His attacks all do Dark-type damage or instant death (or both!), except Aquary Tide, which is the all-hitting water attack, ala (but obviously better than) Maha Aques.

Hunab Ku finally learned his Mutation, which means he can be transformed into the Sword Cu Chulainn!

Cu Chulainn is kind of low-leveled and weak by now (unfortunately I was not lucky enough to get him earlier), but Zandyne (almighty, not "Force" from the other series) and Tarukaja still justify his existence, not to mention his excellent properties: he's immune to instant death and reflects many physical attacks. He's definitely good enough to use the entire game.

Il-Dana got his as well, which means finally, he too can be transformed into Emperor Lugh.

Lugh is better than Cu Chulainn mostly because of superior stats, since his actual spells aren't a whole lot better. However, the difference in Strength is especially notable, since it means his physical hits are more useful in the first place.

Rounding out the Celtic trio is Scathach, who can be made from scratch, thankfully.

Scathach's offense is fairly weak, but she has some decent skills anyway. Tetraja would be more useful if I wasn't aiming for a Dark-immune party anyway, but she's a competent healer who, again, won't be killed easily.

Also at Kismet, is Kashihara.

He offers to tell Maya the legend of Sumaru Castle. He says that the warlord Kitoyada Sumaru constructed Sumaru Castle while looking for the Torifune beneath the land where the city is now, and he controlled people with Wang Long fortunes...

He was eventually slain and mummified, as the legend says.

The other two people are Junnosuke Kuroda and Maihime Amano. Coincidence?

When you learn these three names (from the shrine on Mifune, Kashihara, and a woman at the shrine who I screwed up talking to; you have to take the naming assignment from Shiraishi before entering the subway, but I forgot), you can spread them as rumors at Kuzunoha. New rooms appear in Sumaru Castle if you do, and visiting them allows you to make Suou, Kuroda, and Suou as Personas. Unfortunately, the "Ancestral" Personas, as they are usually called, pretty much suck on their own anyway. They each only come with two spells and can form a fusion spell that's pretty mediocre.

Kuroda actually does have a use outside of this, though; returning him is the only way to get the Carma Ring in English EP (in the Japanese version it's also a bonus for loading from an IS save at the beginning of the game), which you need to get Alice, who is very good. Unfortunately, he requires 4 Fool cards to make.

We have 0.

They're a lot of work to get. The last few mapping quests will net Fool cards, and they can technically be obtained from demon contacting, but only if you're both skilled at conversation and phenomenally lucky.



The seven lights in the opening room of Sumaru Castle (which are, notably, arranged as the "Big Dipper") teleport the party to different floors. They need to find clues to the password, which appear in the form of individual letters, which appear on the walls in each section of the castle. The final light leads ahead, to the door to the "Chamber of Henbai." The password for that door is "PERSEUS."

Katsuya explains that Perseus is the name of the Greek mythical figure who slew Medusa. Why Perseus, though? Well, uhh, you see, ancient people put a lot of faith in the stars, and uhh


OKAY FINE THIS GAME WAS TRANSLATED FROM JAPANESE AND WE HAD TO CHANGE THE PASSWORD ON THE DOOR

The chamber of Henbai is a small room full of pits. The path through is marked on the sign next to the door in the room before, though. You just walk between the large yellow dots. The warp leads to 8F, where a short walk leads to the Chamber of Utena.

Inside Utena, Sudou's plan has entered the final phase, as he's sacrificed the other remaining NWO later. He gives the same spiel about humanity being inherently evil and need in purification. How even on the verge of destruction they want more curses and superstition.

So finally, the dragons rise from the earth, released by the power of Kotodama, and the collected Joker.

They are huge! That means they have huge guts!


Sudou transforms into a goofy looking monster and the party decides to kill him.

His moves mostly revolve around trying to inflict instant death, especially with Petrifying Glare. He does do a fair amount of physical attacking as well, but overall he's not dangerous.


Afterwards, Gozen consumes the corpses and comes to life as a huge monster. At first he uses mostly all-hitting physical attacks, but midway through the battle he'll start using Megidolaon, Trial of Darkness (Dark damage + chance of instant death), and Perpetual Darkness (characters are not allowed to use fusion attacks).

He's weak to Sword-type damage, so Tarukaja on Lugh allows him to hit for tons of damage. Meanwhile, Ulala and Maya heal with Scathach and Maia Custom, while Katsuya and Baofu hit him repeatedly with Zandyne.

Trial of Darkness doesn't hit anyone because everyone is blocking Dark. Otherwise it'd be really annoying, since the kill chance is very high.

After he's dead, this pillar appears, and an FMV kicks in. A wild storm surrounds Sumaru city, destroying the dragons and the outer rings of the Torifune, and then from Nyarlathotep's space, this is shown happening. It's...hard to describe.

The party appears in a strange floating platform. In front of them is something that looks like PANTS. Shadow PANTS, really. Alas, the investigators have failed to seal all the gates.

He impersonates each party member in turn, explaining that he comes from the negative feelings of humans.

He has Tatsuya's friends from the Other Side, and he says that if the party doesn't face their shadows properly, they'll remember what happened, destroying This Side. Then he whisks them away.


Crossing the room and passing through the door leads the party into the Monad Mandala (or "Monado" in a small error). The music here is awesome.

Anyway, time to break, but there's a series of important decisions in the last dungeon here; rather than asking each directly, I'm just going to put it like this: do you want to see the "right" answers, or the ones that make the endgame slightly more difficult (still pretty easy though)?

Half and half, or something. Surprise me.


Ahem.

Help your friends reach self actualization.

YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD

Hey remember you said you were gonna have this done by February, and that you totally promised to fight Dark Alice. Which you totally did promise. in my head

I apologize that this isn't a real update, I forgot to save after killing Gozen but that's kind of okay! See, you can't leave Monad immediately; the actual entrance is in an area behind a magical door. And we were all completely out of SP after beating him! (He doesn't give experience) It's not that we couldn't have made it, since it's pretty easy to escape and Maya would've gotten enough SP running around to heal people, but going back to Satomi Tadashi and buying 99 Chewing Souls for the rest of the game just makes more sense.

Anyway, I'm still not going to do it (because, as I said, I fucked up and I can't get Amano, and Kuroda's also too much work since I've also been ignoring mapping quests on this file), but I forgot to mention the main point of making the Ancestral Personas. Gozen is the mummy of Sumaru, and so the ones who defeated him in the past are extremely strong against him. By leveling each of the three to Rank 8, you can use the fusion "Tenchu-Satsu." Ordinarily it's pretty useless, but it kills Gozen in one shot.

He's also easy enough for this to still be pretty much completely pointless.

Plus, there's some other stuff to do, that I forgot, since I was so excited to be on the easy dungeon and to finally have the Celts.

Saving Narumi:
One consequence of the fact that Sumaru City is now floating is that Narumi is gone. It was built more recently than the rest of the city, and besides, it wasn't there in IS either. But fear not!

Yes, Maya can retroactively save Soejima and his restaurant, the Padparacha, and the people who live at the Ebony bar (the Rumor-Lovin' Bartender, and the fat Arabian guy who gives the Mapping quests), who move into Jolly Roger instead.

Mu Casino:
Remember the rumor that Mu Continent was a Casino, that was in both IS and EP, but I still never used?

You can use rumors to influence which game at Mu gives the best buyout. Slots are the best if you have a turbo controller and can leave the game on while you sleep, or if you have something to do while pressing a button idly for several hours on end.

The poker game can be pretty damn good though, too, since you can a "double or nothing" when you win a hand, cashing up to a ridiculous number of chips in short order. It takes some luck, but the first time I played this game, I blew a million Yen on chips and won another million in about 15 minutes. Which turned out to be pretty important when it came time for the final boss!

Blackjack is a waste. The only good part is the Engrishy "JOIN FORCES" you get for sitting multiple party members at the table.

The prize list is mostly Material Cards and rare-ish consumables.

A lot of the material cards are for Hindu Personas, like Lakshmi, Kali and Brahma. There's also Bishamonten and Charon. Finally, the real draw are the Morning Star and Accuser's Diary. The Diary is for Satan, and...only appears if Elly has been in your party. But fortunately, this counts on your second (or third, etc.) loop, if you pick the character you didn't use the first time!

Lucifer and Satan are both in the 90's, and like in Persona 3 (and also IS) have the Armageddon fusion. Since your materials and character levels don't loop, it's not really worthwhile to buy either card on the first playthrough, since you'd still need to reach 90 to make the other one.

Mu Continent also sells Precious Eggs (400 SP restore, but usually it's possible to afford the turns for the ordinary Chewing Soul instead, which is cheaper and more accessible) and Gem Rings. "Gem Ring" seems to be how they translated "Bead Chain" in this game; I don't know, but the words are close enough that it makes sense to me. In any case, these are the items that restore every party member to full health, as long as they're already alive.

The other fun part of the Casino is seeing the party members rail on each other for gambling.


Seedy CD:

Ixquic asks you to kill the hag, after you've spread the rumor she gives you in the first place, and bring the item she drops, so she can tell the other kids how awesome she is. I guess they wouldn't believe that an "old lady" did it anyway. After you do this, she gives you another rumor, that's basically the same.

At this point, I've waited too long for this to actually be worthwhile, but I'd like to point it out for now anyway. The CD shop is a minor dungeon (there's literally nothing to do here but defeat the two rumor runners), but that's why it has a couple of annoying gimmicks.

First, the favorite move of these speedy enemies is "Escape". So you have to kill them very fast. And the encounter rate isn't that good in the first place.


More annoyingly, Jack Frost informs you at the door that the demons know about Sumaru's secret and have spread a rumor to hinder any attempts to kill them.

I never bought weapons before now, since they're never actually useful on Nate's path. With Elly they're extremely useful against the magical familiars Chizuru sends at you, as well as the fortune teller herself.

Anyway, if you come here before you outlevel the runners, you can use Estoma on 1F, where Persona use is still allowed (since there's no demons there to kill with them), or Clean Salt, the item that gives the same effect. It'll weed out all the encounters with weak, annoying demons, making the process go much quicker. Unfortunately, after you've passed the demon you're hunting for in levels, you won't ever encounter it either. So you have to just eat all the encounters. The good news is, if you are way overleveled, they're probably not going to get away.

I'm pretty sure I only said I'd beat this game by February, but I definitely intend to do some bonus stuff. Just not necessarily on any sort of schedule. Better yet, I'm finally running the emulator on a half-decent (actually, a very good) monitor so the Bomb Shelter is no longer impossible, just somewhat annoying.

Hooray!

Estoma? What a nice idea, Atlus! Maybe you should think about including it in other games!

Most of the encounters in Monad are awfully easy, and can be destroyed more or less instantly with the fusion formed by using Garudyne (Scathach) -> Maha Aques (Maia Custom) -> Maha Garudyne (Lugh). The best part of spamming this fusion is the chance that Scathach will gain two ranks as a bonus from the fusion. Of course, we really only need her at Rank 5, where she learns Spiral Shot.

Spiral Shot actually sucks on its own, but it's extremely valuable in fusion...

The best demons are Star Valkyrie demons, who have the amazingly crappy properties: Strong Physical, Weak Magic, making them extremely easy pickings. But one of them decided to pester Maya, which led to what I think may be the funniest conversation I've had the entire game.



Monad, as a dungeon, is pretty straightforward. It's divided into six sections, called "Worlds," each of which contains a special room that shares a name with that world. The first World is the World of Reason. In the Room of Reason, the party observes Katsuya's past. The flashback features him and Kashihara talking. The teacher is surprised that he's giving up on his dream to be a "dessert chef" to join the police.

Then his shadow appears, and tells everyone that Katsuya resents his family; if it hadn't been for his brother and father, he could've done what he wanted, instead of joining the force. And...

Real Katsuya gets pretty pissed as well and points his gun at his brother, and Ulala implores Maya to stop him. Maya can urge him to stop, but the better option is to tell him "I believe in you." Like in IS, it's better to let your party members stand up for themselves. The shadow disappears for now, and Katsuya admits that what it said was partially true. And if Maya talks to him after the scene ends, he blushes.

In Ulala's flashback, she's drinking one night with Maya, and complaining about some guy she knows. It's just before the beginning of the game (probably the night she called the Joker, though the only real indication of the time frame is that she mentions the "Deja Vu Boy"), and she begins to wonder why Maya seems so much luckier with men. (I'd say it's more like less unlucky, but anyway)


Shadow Ulala is like Shadow Chie from P4, accusing her of clinging to Maya because she herself is just too lame. She asks Maya if Ulala has "found" herself. But Maya says "it's not up to me to decide."


Most of the doors just lead to chests or forward, but in each world there is a door that leads back to a "rest area." They're all locked at first though, and there's a crystal somewhat nearby that unlocks them. The rest area just features each door back, doors to the Velvet Room and Trish's Fountain, and a door that leads back to the city, rendering those doors kind of redundant. The portal back to the city, unsurprisingly, leads through the shrine. Tatsuya thinks to himself, that the symbolism is obvious. It all started "here" (except not on This Side), so this is the only place that it makes sense for it to end.

Anyway, there's enough Fortune cards on hand to make Skuld.

Skuld blocks Dark, keeping with the theme of all the other Personas I've been making and using. Her skill set is okay, and I used another Mediarama card, because even though it's redundant (she learns the spell herself eventually) all the other cards I have are just straight up terrible. And I want her to be useful right away; I'm phasing out Maia Custom in favor of her, because it's dumb to use her the entire game.

In the World of Judgment, Eikichi lies sleeping still, having not regained his memories. It's time to fight Shadow Katsuya and Ulala.

Shadow Katsuya is by far the more annoying; he uses Reverse Hyperion and has a bunch of physical attacks. Most aren't that bad, but Vice Shot has an instant kill chance, which is the part that sucks. Shadow Ulala has Reverse Asteria and mostly punches people and casts Dark Nebula, which does lots of Physical damage and then lots of Dark Damage. Or none! Because nobody is vulnerable to Dark!

It's actually good that she uses this move, because it plays right into our delightful strategy. You see, the three Celtic Personas get the fusion Tir Na Nog, formed by using Heat Wave on Cu Chulainn, then Scathach's Spiral Shot, and finishing with Deathbound from Lugh.

Tir Na Nog is a weird fusion because the main determinant of its damage is how much HP the characters participating in it have left. In other words, if you just use it cold, with everyone at full health, it does single-digit damage. On the other hand, if the three characters are in really dire shape, it does incredible damage. Somewhere in between is the best place to use it, since you don't want to leave yourself too open, and by buffing up the guy with Lugh with Taru Kaja (which is conveniently on Cu Chulainn) you can still get great damage.

Visually, there's nothing to see; it's really hard to even get a screenshot of, since the animation is just a shining green cross appearing on the enemies for a second before dispersing.

Couple other things to point out about returning to town:

There's a third large view of the city, and a third overworld theme. It's not as good as the first two. The picture's pretty cool, though.

The Time Count's dialogue, throughout the game, but especially near the end (the first two boxes are if you talk to him between finishing Torifune and finishing Sumaru Castle), is quite similar to things Nyarlathotep says. Huh. I've never figured out quite what the point of that is, but it's interesting anyway, I guess.

By pure happenstance, I just found out that Torifune was an enemy in SMTII. Crazy!

At a certain point, your party members will start to comment on it if you talk to them in Time Castle. Let's just kill him now and save ourselves the trouble of running through Monad Mandala!

After the battle, Eikichi is still asleep. A golden butterfly appears.


Baofu's room in the World of Knowledge shows an imagined scene at his former partner's grave, where Reverse Odysseus is choking her.

This hits him pretty hard.

If Maya does nothing, he'll calm down on his own, then he'll start talking about how stupid he was to go on this whole revenge thing since the one he was angry at was himself. He gets pretty mopey so Katsuya punches him.

So he just kind of brushes it off and says he was acting. I don't really know what happened there.

In the Room of Emotion, in the fifth World, Nyarlathotep is waiting for them. He tells them he's glad they made it and he asks Maya a question.

The second answer is the right one, and if you pick it he'll try to goad Maya into shooting him. If she does, the bullet actually hits PANTS and he gets knocked down to 1HP. And that's also the wrong answer, obviously. I picked the first one though, since I wanted to and because Turnip only said "help your friends."

Monad has several doors trapped with monsters. You can't contact your way out of these battles and if you retreat, the door shuts again. So you have to win. Most are really easy, but the Devil Shu in the World of Conviction takes quite a beating.

And he casts Dark Baptism, nullifying healing effects on the party. It's bad!

The Worlds of Emotion and Conviction also have the Fortune Fenrir demons I wanted to Contact to get more cards from.

Their occasional response to the third option, which I unfortunately didn't get a picture of, is the delightfully vague "You good guy! Me eat."
Thanks to them, we can make Verdandi.

Verdandi still nulls Dark, but is weak to Light. Urd is weak to Dark, and nulls Light, which is a hell of a lot less useful. Verdandi gets the Recarm Dora spell because there's a Sacrifice Card in Monad (World of Instinct, I think, but I already forgot); if I'd known/remembered it was there I would've switched her card with Skuld. But oh well!

In the Room of Conviction, Lisa sees PANTS and calls him "Chin-yan."

She remembered.

Shadow Maya and Baofu appear.

They're a little harder than the other two, especially because I gave a wrong answer. They have three actually dangerous moves:

Level Trap, from Reverse Prometheus (Baofu): does damage to four characters, and kills the fifth, the one who's the highest level (IOW PANTS).
Baptism by Thunder, from Reverse Prometheus: Lightning damage and Shock status. Enough Said.
Diamond Dust (Reverse Artemis): Ice damage and freezing. Still annoying.

Maya reflects magic but is weak to physical. Baofu is weak to lightning but we can't really take advantage of that. Tir Na Nog pretty much destroys Shadow Maya. Magic is the better choice for Baofu.

He can also use Shadow Force, which changes your characters' HP and SP values and then hides them from you. It's really not a problem at all!

After the battle, Ginko tries to support PANTS. She says she now knows how he's been hurting this whole time.

Philemon silently whisks her away, though.

The Room of Conviction is actually the last room in the whole game. There's a pillar of light in the back of the room, and I think you can guess where it leads...

Nyarlathotep's theme is still thoroughly badass. I'm not sure I can say that enough times. He shows them that Jun's still here, then tells PANTS it's time to tell his friends the whole story. And so he shows them what happened after Maya was killed on the Other Side, because at Iwato the flashbacks he shows only go up to that point.

The same conversation goes on, as Philemon tells the party they have the power to change reality, and if they forget everything that happened there'll be a new world where everything is Just Fine.

He'll respond to "Thank him" by telling PANTS there's no need for thanks. "Hit him" still leads to


Since Tatsuya was supposed to forget what happened on the other side, but didn't, leaving his friends to bear the burden of ignorance, Nyarlathotep says he must be punished.

And so, he explains, he "coaxed fate" on This Side, manipulating events in the hopes that they would meet again. It's the reason he controlled Tatsuzou and his organization as Gozen, and made Tatsuya Sudou the Joker.

PANTS, for his part, made a pretty admirable show of doing as much as possible on his own, though.

The party tells PANTS there's no such thing as fate-it's just something you say when things don't go the way you want. Nyarlathotep transforms into the Moon Howler, the same monster he appears as at the end of IS, and the form of "Hitler's" "Persona."


Nyarlathotep has the coolest voice in the game. The scream as he attacks is hilarious, but unfortunately I guess you'll have to take my word for it.

The Moon Howler has some Dark skills we can safely ignore, plus Megidolaonn and a couple physical attacks, the worst of which is Shadow Kill.

That means it's the one we want him to use, because Tir Na Nog can counter for crazy damage.

He has a little less than 10,000 HPs if you woke up either Eikichi or Lisa, but not both. The first part of the battle ended in about five turns.

He turns into this thousand-faced tentacle monster (disclaimer: sprite may not actually have 1,000 faces), who is also the most dangerous boss in the game. In this form Nyarlathotep has the Strong: All property, and 18,000 health. He takes a very, very long time to kill.

He starts off mostly using Shadow Kill, along with Wheel of Fortune and Wheel of Time.

Wheel of Fortune prevents characters from using P. Change, which is pretty much a waste of a turn. Wheel of Time hits each character for about 300 damage. He can also decide to use Chaos Element, a really annoying spell that hits for 100-1000 Dark damage and has a high instant kill chance. It's the reason I made sure to get everyone Dark-immune Personas, though just having one Persona with Tetraja (like Scathach does) who refreshes it any time he casts it is good enough. Finally, he'll use Transient Ripple rarely, which is Dekaja with a fancier graphic.

At about half health, he gets his ultimate move, Crawling Chaos. It hits everyone for about 350-400 damage and has a high chance of causing Mute status. Ugh.

This battle is apparently really easy if you spend an extra 8 hours making yourself way overprepared, but without grinding a lot for various things in the last dungeon, it's respectably difficult. Because he's Strong: All, Tir Na Nog doesn't hit that hard anymore, and by the end the battle becomes enough of a mess that it's more about staying alive and getting in hits when we can. Fortunately, we have four different Personas with Mediarama, all of whom block Dark, so the healing is pretty well covered, usually.

(That's Chaos Element, so she didn't die)

I thought Recarm Dora was crappy in this game, but it's actually not! It still saved my ass a few times in this battle, especially after the moment pictured there. So I didn't have to do it again.

The first time I played this game, I brought 25 Gem Rings (from Mu Continent) and had to start chucking them every time Nyarlathotep moved by the end of the battle. When I finally won, I had blown every useful consumable I had, including all of my Tetrakaja items, several Somas and all of the Rings. If it had gone on one more turn I would've died. Which sucks, because this battle takes a long time.


Philemon then appears and tells Nyarlathotep that he's won their bet. The humans have proven their potential.

He gives the old Dracula speech about how he'll always be there as long as there are humans. The party agrees that there will always be shadows in people's hearts, and then Maya and PANTS shoot and slash him. He collapses to the ground and vanishes.

So that's it, right? We win!

PANTS still doesn't belong on this side. He says that if he stays, people will still eventually remember, and the world will simply turn into the Other Side. So he has to go back, but he knows that he, Jun, Lisa, and Eikichi can still make that one a great world, too.

(The top option, he says a line he'll say in a second anyway)

Baofu tells him that being an adult doesn't completely suck, referring back to their conversation on the subway, and the others become emotional as PANTS prepares to leave, replacing himself with a doppelganger who has no idea what happened at all.


Epilogue:
First, there's a boring scene with Maya. A reporter at Kismet tells her that the boss wants to talk to her, then tells Maya that she's inspired her, and that she's going to work harder.

Maya is still quiet.

Next, Baofu is visiting Miki's grave.

His partner in this endeavor is Ulala, who promises to watch over Baofu for her.

At Parabellum Nate and Ellen are waiting for someone(s) to arrive.

(Nate's response: "Of course it was.")
They talk about how now they really have to live up to the world that Maya, PANTS and the others saved. They apparently know everything that happened, more or less. Finally, their friends get here.

I haven't been able to figure out if you're supposed to know who Chris' significant other is. Hell, if you play as Ellen first, and aren't familiar with the first game either (like I did, the first time I played this), then he suddenly appears as a not-insignificant part of the ending even if you've never seen him before. So while I still don't know what's going on in this scene, at least it makes more sense than the first time I saw it.

Jun, Lisa and Eikichi all are drawn to the shrine once again.

I don't know if the dialogue in this scene changes if you gave different answers in Monad. I wish I did! They all feel that they've forgotten something, just like before, but they try not to cry (and fail). How painfully repetitive.

Tatsuya meets his brother on the beach. They're closer now, it seems, and the younger brother asks about being a detective. Katsuya wonders what's gotten into him, but he nonetheless begins talking about it. It reminds me a little of something in Persona 4...



The game ends with a final FMV, which I won't even try to verbalize. Just watch it.

Thanks for the excellent playthrough of these two games. I've owned EP for years (I think I reviewed it ages ago? It's been a while) but haven't touched it for ... most of those years. And like most Murricans I'd never seen IS. It was a treat to see them together, although it made me even more irritated at the fact that Atlus didn't bring IS over back in the day.

(Anyone else who isn't employed by Atlus remember the "If enough of us spread rumors about Innocent Sin being brought over, will it come true?" quote somewhere on their old website? Rather salt-in-a-sound, I thought.)

Well, the only female P1 alum not present is Ayase. I'm not sure how plausible her getting together with Chris might be, though.

Anyway, that was awesome.

Hooray! What was your final time?

!!!

That's cheating!

Also, I note you decided to leave out the ending song. That's... probably for the best. The lyrics make me want to stab my ears, but at least the singer isn't... like the one they have for P3/4.

You can't even get them both in your party at the same time (please, remake, please...) so I don't think it makes much sense. If anything, it seems more likely to me that Mary is actually trying to talk herself up in the third person. But I doubt that too.
Roughly 27 hours. 21 for IS. I used a LOT of turbo though, when doing really slow and repetitive but easy tasks, like leveling Personas, fighting Gozen, and trying to earn Mutations, which probably exaggerated the counter (since it doesn't make loading any faster) while making my actual time sitting at the computer a bit shorter.
Yes, I am a semantics-abusing bitch, and proud of it!
I wanted to leave the ending as the last thing I put on that page, but I was going to mention it. You pretty much said what I would've, though.

Other people: If you're still curious, it's Change your Way by Elisha LaVerne. It's not totally awful, but as someone who looks forward to credits a lot for awesome music, the SMT games generally disappoint. Especially the Personas. (Snow Queen Credits Theme, however = KICK ASS)

After the credits end, you get to save clear data.

The little portrait there is of Nanjou, of course. New Game + in Eternal Punishment is pretty slight. You pretty much only keep your Tarot cards. This is a pretty awesome feature if you have a lot, though (say, if you did mapping quests). Cards registered with the Time Count will stay in his purchase list, though most of the good ones cost too much for most of the game. As I mentioned before, the Morning Star or Accuser's Diary will reappear in the casino prize list, even if you pick the other character. I also understand that rare mutations you've unlocked reappear, though I haven't had opportunity to confirm this, yet. And since this is something I never even brought up, now I'd better explain.

Most Personas only have one possible evolution. Hunab Ku will always learn to transform into Cu Chulainn, for an example that came into play in this run. A very few special Personas have two potential changes, though. Priestess Scathach is one.

She has a 7/8 chance of being able to turn into Sarasvati, and a 1/8 for Justice Pallas Athena.

That's not quite as bad as it sounds, since you can't get a Persona you already have. So if you get Sarasvati the first time, you just have to make her, then trigger Scathach's mutation again. It takes a while, and is not really worth it, but it is there.

You can also do this to avoid getting screwed in the extremely rare case of summoning accidents. If a Persona creation fails, it's supposed to turn into the Level 2 Devil Poltergeist...but if you already have one, it can't! Or at least, that's supposedly how it works. I believe it, but I haven't yet seen a fusion fail in either Persona 2.

Anyway, if you play through the game twice and get both the Nate and Ellen portraits on the save file, you can then access the EX dungeon from that file. I haven't done this yet since I haven't gotten the file necessary for it, but I know a little about what's there and it's probably cool enough to Let's Play sometime.

Other bonus things I'm considering doing:
IS:
Entering the wrong buildings during Leo's bombing spree (I'm pretty sure this is really short)
Giving the wrong answer for Yukino's choice on Caracol
The "ultimate weapons" quest

EP:
Ellen's Route (Sumaru TV, and a different boss battle in the Ruins)
More Personas and some special fusions (Ragnarok! Norn's Twinkle! Hindu Personas! Izanami!)
Alice
Dark Alice, as per Turnip's request

Thank you for reading!
Slightly bigger thanks to Zef, whose awesome Festivus gift was one of the biggest reasons this is done now instead of much later, eirikr for being the reason I made the Celts, Nich in general for being awesome and posting the picture of him dressed up as Nanjou, and Turnip for his awesome SMT LP's and some of the advice/information he coughed up in this thread too.

I knew that your time sounded weird when you posted it earlier!

...I tried not to chime in too much because I already knew everything that would happen from those choices.

I really liked it as the map theme! The first map theme is one of my favorite vidjagame songs eveeeer

Is there any way to cheat through the battles in Eternal Punishment? I find the whole system in this installment a bore.