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

Everybody has their weak moments, I say forgiveness is best!

Besides, you could always use another party member if this changes whether she stays in the group or not.

It doesn't seem in Maya's character to hold an act of weakness against a person, especially since everything turned out all right in the end. Let's forgiveness!

the correct answer is forgive her because she's cooler than everyone else.

<3Ulala<3

You need her in case any space reporting is required! You can't finish her off!
Also, from the choices, Maya is obviously believing in forgiveness more, so I would go with that.

If Maya defends Ulala, she has the opportunity to get this very soon:


If she doesn't, then she can't. Maia Custom is kind of overpowering for a very long time, though, with some great Void properties and no weaknesses. Maha Aques and Mediarama are extremely useful as well. I was almost hoping that I wouldn't get to use her because it's somewhat interesting to figure out how to make up for not having her...but I'm not going to complain. (In fact I'm playing a "study run" as well to check out some Personas I haven't used before and to ensure that I don't screw myself up too badly at any point, and I answered wrong to make sure I'd be able to handle the next bits)

After Maya answers, Baofu points out that Ulala's evidence against Makimura would go away and he would go free as a con man if she were killed. Katsuya gets ready to punch him but Baofu steps in.

He smashes Makimura's face and the con man asks Katsuya if he's really just going to let that happen. Suou calls him mean names too and Makimura runs off swearing that he'll return Ulala's money and stop being suck a dick. Katsuya wants to take Ulala to the hospital but Baofu says that the Joker is just like a Persona and they'll have to take her to the Velvet Room to take care of it.

There, Igor uses his cellphone and Ulala seems mostly exorcised, but he warns that the Joker powers are just the heart's "shadow" and they cannot be fully removed.

Ulala pledges herself to Maya's cause to make up for all the trouble she's caused, and she accepts the extremely important task of keeping the Kegare under control. Then Maya's cell phone rings again.


Noriko turned into a Joker and was hauled off to Zodiac by the mafia. Oh dear. Katsuya immediately realizes that this means Noriko was the one who called for the murders of Hannya and the man who gimped Anna, which is obviously why at Sevens she was SO SURE that her "Big Sis" didn't kill anyone.

Also note, that Yukino was the one she talked to at Kismet. Heh.


Most of Baofu's shop dialogues right now are about how he doesn't care about Noriko and just wants to know why the Mafia is kidnapping Jokers, but at Bikini Line he makes fun of Ulala. Katsuya wants to investigate the Mafia, and Ulala mostly apologizes to Maya and complains about how stupid she is. There's also this though.


At Shiraishi Toku will give the "official" rumor that the Ramen Lady is a man-searcher, since her tip was used to locate some guy at a bar in Aoba. Wow, we haven't heard about that one yet!

Oh.

Buying this one at Kuzunoha opens up a new sub-quest thing.

Since Maya proved so good at it before, the Shiraishi Lady asks for her help in tracking down people. Maya has to pay a nominal fee to accept the search (at this point, 1000 Yen), but after completing it will make the commission which is worth ten times as much (for a net gain of 9x the "price"). This is actually a pretty tedious way to make money but some of the naming is a prerequisite for other sidequests and if you know or have a good idea where the people are it's not too terrible. The first wave is particularly easy, with a gambler (at the Mu Continent casino), a journalist (a co-worker at Kismet who tells Maya not to moonlight), and a guy who's in love with a widow (Kaori).


Finally, Maya decides to check out what's up with this panhandling statue of a cat at Kuzunoha. (I also took this picture because I think it's funny that Kuzunoha has some little old TV in IS and a huge flat-screen in EP) After feeding the cat cash for a few minutes, taking nearly all of her savings, the statue...apologizes to her? A voice leads her over to a locked door near the washing machines, which suddenly opens to reveal...


Nekomata has a handful of unique rumors which are particular favorites of mine. One is that Etheria has beauty treatments (which I haven't found terribly useful), and the other one she gives right now is that Kaori does Aromatherapy. Aromatherapy, like fortunes and food, is another consumable dungeon buff. This one influences encounter rates of certain demon Arcana. Today Maya wants to meet more Strength demons so she gets the "Geranium" aromatherapy from Kaori. She also gets the "Yellow Dragon" fortune from Sumaru Genie and everyone has a drink at Parabellum, too. Once everybody's buffed up it's time to check out the Zodiac.

Out on the dance floor, Anna explains that she's learned that the Tien Tao Lien bought Zodiac, and took some of the Jokers to a secret casino hidden in the back. She implores the party to rescue Noriko and take care of PANTS who's been strangely distant from her recently, despite their friendship.

The rumor that Zodiac has a huge maze in the back persists, so it gets spread because there's a lot to do here.

First off, Ulala needs to be brought back up to speed, since she's six levels behind from missing Gold. Also, Maia needs a mutation so she can become Maia Custom, or Odysseus needs it to learn Soothing Melody, which is like a battle-only Media that's way better. The extra Luck from their fortune makes the Mutation odds higher. Maia got hers first, so the party backtracked out and Maya got Maia Custom. Then, while she was re-leveling Maia Custom so she'd know Mediarama and Maha Aques, Odysseus got his.

The Aromatherapy leads to encountering more Strength Kiyohime demons in here. Most of the monsters are mafia guys or zombies who are really annoying. There's a bit of demon information in Zodiac that Kiyohime is obsessed with cleanliness and would happily clean the floors if asked. She's kind of a bitch to contract though. Eventually Maya gets through to her (with Katsuya and Ulala's help).

To be honest, this is completely unnecessary, but it's pretty amusing, and makes a couple of rooms much easier to access. The damage floors in Zodiac take off a huge chunk of health with every step, and while Maya can easily heal through it, it's just more fun this way. Plus, once that job is taken care of, it's very easy to get Free cards from them, which are extremely useful.


Ulala tells Jack Frost's fortune, so he wonders how she does it. All of the demon questions and responses Ulala ran into here (since she's the best for contacts in this dungeon) are pretty plain unfortunately. Jack Frost just laments that he won't be able to find out from her.

Eventually Maya reaches a door in the back where the mafia guys ask her for the password for the secret club. She can backtrack so Baofu can beat it out of a couple of the guys in a staff room, or I just pretend that Ulala uses her mystic Wang Long powers to figure it out because it's "Panther" every time you play the game and I already spent a long time here getting Maia and Odysseus mutations.

Inside Katsuya and Baofu both recognize a guy from their previous encounters.

I appreciate what they were trying to do with this but it just looks silly. Baofu confronts the man, who he identifies as "Yung Pao," an infamous assassin.


Baofu demands to know what they're doing with Tatsuzou and the Jokers but he refuses to talk. Instead he says that they only have one Joker, who is "quite a tiger" and they bring her out to kill the party. Noriko is led out by two hitmen and Baofu yells at everyone to stand back. The Jokersona appears.


Surely she's seen that happen before!

The battle with Joker Noriko is infamously difficult among first-time players of EP but it's really pretty laughable once you know it's coming and avoid using Personas weak to Magic or Water/Ice. There's also the matter of being able to damage her through her relatively high defenses.

She's accompanied by a couple of hitmen who are quickly dispatched with Maia Custom's Maha Aques and Pixie's Megido. Baofu heals with Soothing Melody. After they're gone, it's just a matter of wailing on her with the best spells available (which are pretty bad; Baofu and Ulala only do about 20 damage a hit at best, while Katsuya does almost 70) while Maya keeps everyone up with Mediarama.

Joker Noriko's moves are Marin Karin, Maha Aques, a schoolgirl kick, and Old Maid. She always appears to be dancing a little bit, and cheerfully spouts little quips like "I want to see blood!" which are more than a little disturbing. At low health she'll start using Absolute Zero, which has a modest freeze chance and does a ton of ice damage. Aside from the chance that it'll freeze all of your good healers it's not much worse than Maha Aques.

After the battle Katsuya continues to press Baofu about his past and how he knows so much (I'm sure he wants to hear this story where Baofu killed 25 Mafia men too) so of course they start arguing again. Some people are sick of this. Like me for example


Igor repeats the process on Noriko, and Anna asks Katsuya if Noriko is going to be punished. Baofu says Katsuya can't do anything, which is true, and Suou points out that Sudou and the Mafia have it coming first anyway. Then he gets a call on his cell. I think Igor should cut service to the Velvet Room.

Somebody is offering them advice to pursue Sudou's activities, if they'll meet him at Aoba Park. He says he knows who can help them. Katsuya asks the man to identify himself but he says he can't give that up just yet.


Next Time: Who. R. U?

Isn't it so refreshing to see anyone and everyone entering the Velvet Room with no problem whatsoever? (in Chinese)

Also, if you take Makimura to the Velvet Room, he's afraid that Maya is part of a cult that wants to sacrifice him. (in Chinese)

I hope we see more of Yung Pao, because now I automatically read all his lines as ending with...well, you know.

(He's an expert.)

Yeah, I've always liked that. ("Always" meaning since I played this game for the first time like 10 months ago)
This was one of the pictures I thought I had. Then I forgot to mention it too. Oops!

The Makimura section is the only part so far that I didn't try and check everyone's shop dialogues for interesting or amusing bits though because damn I hate that son of a bitch. Also the Hirasaka shops kinda suck except Shiraishi.

And yeah, there'll be more Yung Pao. (in Chinese)

Today's part will come off as slightly lazy! Because it is! I should've just tacked this on after Zodiac but now that I didn't I don't have much choice.

The talk around town is the same, aside from things referring to Zodiac, and a small bit that pretty much implies the identity of "Sneak". There's really nothing interesting going on, aside from a couple rumors: the flowers at Aoba Park talk, and there's a Tek Tek demon in Kasugayama High School.

Aoba Park is the only dungeon you can revisit in EP, though, because you have to go back later for another event, so I didn't feel like "clearing" it today. Let me sum up this visit in one picture:


Tidal Wave is formed by having Arianrhod cast Aqua, somebody else cast Maha Garu (normal Garu works as well), and Maia Custom finishing up with Maha Aques.

It will one-shot pretty much anything you can meet here, except for:
Jack Frost who voids Water (Ulala just contacts him away, since they're really annoying)
(Justice) Nata, the high-level rare demon who drops his own Material Card. The Nata Persona can't even be summoned for a while anyway.

Easy as the encounters here are with Maia Custom, they also give tons of experience, but there's no real point in grinding.


At the Rest Area, everyone takes a look out for "Sneak." True to his name, he comes in through the back. He explains once again that he can't say who he is, then starts talking about Sudou's conspiracy. He mentions the Mafia and Police again, but goes much, much further.


Katsuya wants to bust the police leadership right now, but the informant tells them they can't possibly do that. Sudou has too much power, and Katsuya would just end up like his father. Katsuya wants to know more. The subject gets changed again, and the party is told that they'll have to find a weak point in the "New World Order" to bring down Tatsuzou.


He gets up and leaves pictures on the bench, telling them that if they can find the people pictured, they can work with them to fight for freedom. Ulala is the first to come up with a way to contact them: start a rumor!


Katsuya objects to the idea on the basis that it's immoral to spread rumors about people we don't know, especially here where they become true and Baofu (and, as his dialogue indicates, Maya) say that the media will be clued in on the rumor and that they can't possibly get away with it this way. Ulala wins though, with the ever-devastating counterargument, "None of you have come up with any better ideas!"


"I'm not so sure" leads to Ulala giving Maya the rumor fee of 3000 Yen but she needs it more than Maya does.

Maya shows Tamaki the pictures and she says the people in them look familiar...


So, who do we want to meet at Parabellum? A man or a woman? The short version is that this choice changes the fifth party member to join, the next dungeon, and a boss later in the game. So it's kind of important. Vote now! Even though the next real update may not be until Sunday

Next Time: Revelations!

Pick the racist one.

Wait.



Oh. Right. That doesn't narrow it down, does it? Pick the racist one that doesn't wear a motorcycle helmet around 24/7.

Make it the character from Persona 1 we haven't seen already!

I'm pretty prone to lurking most of the time, but I've really been enjoying this thread. Yet, now I feel the need to speak up. There are two reasons for this:

1. I own EP, have played all the way to the last boss. Couldn't win. Lost (read: Stupidly Deleted) the save.
2. My current save in the game is just after this decision (after the subsequent dungeon), I chose Ellen. I don't have the patience to continue.

Strangely, I chose Ellen on my first play through also. One could see where this is going...

Choose Nate.

I've been planning this for a while, since Persona 2, especially Eternal Punishment has a lot of cameos and carry-overs from the first game. I think it counts as interesting enough, and, that aside, it's somewhat amusing on its own.



Persona is about a bunch of totally American high school students who live in the totally American (if you can ignore the transvestite arcade owners, the Shinto shrine, and the pharmacy song) town of "Lunarvale."

The story begins as several of them are hanging out in a nondescript dark room at St. Hermelin High School after school.

"You" - a red-headed boy who is the apparent leader of the group, despite being even less capable of forming coherent English sentences than the rest of the cast. (that's saying something!) He mostly hides it by sticking to the old maxim about keeping quiet and appearing foolish. Philemon gives him the Persona Seimen Kongo.

Mark - the only black kid in Lunarvale, he suffers continual racism from characters and writers, but he deserves it, too. His awful Persona is Chariot Ogun

Nate - the heir to some huge company, Nate is a stuck-up rich kid who has a powerfully familial bond to his butler Alfred. He's also smarter than everyone else but pretends not to be so they don't feel too insulted and intimidated. Or maybe he isn't smarter than everyone else but pretends to be whenever he has the chance, it's hard to tell. He summons Hierophant Aizen Myouou in combat.

Brad - an obnoxious jackass who is fortunately optional. However, because of this I can't say anything else about him, aside from that his persona is Justice Nemhain.

Alana -
A ditzy blonde girl who is pretty terrible in combat but makes up for it by her awesome powers of demon seduction. Her persona is Magician Houri, no joke. I had a sneaking suspicion that she would be taken away by a Kanaloa near the end of the game but this didn't happen FUCK ME WHY DID I GO FOR THE TENTACLE RAPE JOKE

Ellen -
I'm not sure if there's anything more to say about her because like Brad, she didn't join my party. Oops! Her Persona is Judgement Nike.

Yuki - Less obnoxious than everyone else, she ditches all these losers an hour in and isn't seen for the rest of the main story. Bah. Like in IS, she uses Empress Vesta.

Not present in this scene but I'm mentioning them here since they show up in EP but I didn't write them into this anywhere else either:

Chunky - Persona 2's rumormonger appears in a bit part here during the Snow Queen Quest where Alana steps on his heart and he's posessed by a PENIS DEMON. Maybe he does something else, too, I don't really know.

Chris - Guido's half-brother. They really hate each other. He was restricted to one Arcana (mostly) before it was cool. He ends up going into business with Chunky in time for a couple of bit parts in Persona 2, but he's not very good at it because he mostly just scares the hell out of people.

Brad convinces everyone to play "Persona" but Mark is sure that nothing will happen. They bet on a meal at the local all-you-can-eat and everyone thinks Brad will be right because they hate the black kid. Nothing happens at first, but then a ghostly image of a little girl appears and they all get knocked out and meet Philemon.

After everyone wakes up in the school's infirmary, You, Nate, Mark, and Yuki head for the hospital to meet another "friend," Mary, who's been hospitalized for quite a while. While they're visiting her her condition suddenly becomes very bad and she's carted into the ICU, when a sudden trauma screws everything up. The characters return to a waiting room where Alfred has just been killed by demons and their Personas awaken. On their way out of the hospital they meet Elly whose Persona also arises.

The party heads to the shrine to rescue Mary's mother Nancy but I forget how they even know she's there. They take her to the school so her injuries can be treated and the party breaks up so that some of them can fix a weird hole which appeared in the wall.

As You prepares to head back out into the demon-infested town (which also has magical barriers preventing anyone from escaping it) he's joined by Nate and...Mary? Mary acts like everything is normal and thinks everyone is crazy for suggesting that she was in the hospital.


The trio go to the Police Station to rescue Brad and Mark who have been taken into custody, and when they're rescued, the police are revealed to be demons themselves. Nate plans for everyone present to sneak into the SEBEC corp offices since he's sure they're behind this, and the way in is through an abandoned factory.


Mark is familiar with the place since he used to graffiti it and Alana also forces her way into the party if You didn't figure out how to prevent her from doing so (by recruiting someone else or placeholding for the last guy). They sneak into the SEBEC building and confront the evil Guido who runs the company, but he sends his bodyguard "Tiny" who as his name indicates is a huge brawny guy to kill them. He fails and the party chases him into the basement where he attempts to use the "Deva System," a huge machine with as-yet-unexplained powers. One of his doctors realizes his evil and tries to sacrifice himself to take out Guido but he ultimately fails.


The party wakes up in the school and the world is even more fucked up than before. The hospital is replaced by a castle, the police station by a pink forest, there's a huge barrier down the middle of the town that can only be passed under through the subway tunnels, and one of Mary's friends is suddenly a rich bitch. Also, it seems to be months ago, like before she was hospitalized.

The party continues to wander around town trying to figure out how to confront and stop Guido, and along the way they keep encountering a strange little girl in a black dress, named "Maggie," whose face resembles Mary's and who has mad magic powers. Their search for a way into the castle also leads them to "Mae," who is like Maggie but in a white dress. After talking her down, Mae gives You a compact which opens the gate at Castle Mana.

At the castle, the party catches up with Guido again, but he explains that with the mirror they left for him he's attained godlike powers and he shows them off by creating a huge palace in the middle of town (which he identifies as the "real world") and vanishing. The party finds a way to the palace with Nancy's help but she's stuck in the alternate dimension because somebody had to run the machine. In the "real world" everyone has gone nihilistic, and after Guido is defeated he's possessed by his "Persona" who is actually Nyarlathotep.


As he dies, Guido explains that the Deva System, which is here in his palace, created the other world out of Mary's imagination, and Maggie and Mae are both different "parts" of her mind. Mary runs off to see for herself, and faced with the truth, returns to her dreamworld while trying to shut everyone else out. Nate says they should just destroy the machine and end it, but Mark refuses on the basis that Mary will die, and Alana agrees to keep going because Mary lent her a hanky. The party finds Guido's mirrors, however, and uses them to reappear in the Pink Forest.

There they meet Nancy and head back to the Gingerbread House to find Mae. She tells them that Maggie released a REALLY evil Mary called Pandora, and they need to find "Ideal Mary" (the one who joined them at the school) and "Real Mary" (who will give them a third mirror) to stop Pandora. You, Nate, and Mark find Mary in the Lost Forest and convince her that she wasn't the evil one and all the suffering wasn't her fault, and she rejoins the party, then they get the mirror from a watery cave under the shrine.

Finally, they use a mirror in St. Hermelin's library to enter Pandora's Realm, the "Avidea World" but more simply summed up as THE FINAL CIRCLE OF HELL. Pandora has quite illogically managed to obtain the Deva System, or at least enough of it to control it, and she reveals her plan to use it to create a new dimension where nothing exists, ironically using its powers of creation to destroy everything.


Pandora is a penis demon who turns into a completely bitch-tastic butterfly boss and after a ridiculously grueling battle because the butterfly form absorbs magic most of the time and casts Tarunda and heals herself the rest of the time she finally asks You why You didn't give up.

I was wondering about that myself.

Mary sends everyone off, kisses You because she loves You, then presumably uses the Deva System one last time to make a world that mostly doesn't suck so bad and she's not hospitalized anymore.

It's a shame about Nyarlathotep though. And that butler. A damn shame.

For anyone who doesn't know (that is, most of us), there's more on this from HG101:

And you can download it here. There's also a fan-made English version at OC Remix, but I'm pretty sure the lyrics have nothing to do with the original. (Although they would fit almost too well in the racist world of Lunarvale.)

Dale North's remix is hilarious but it mostly makes me wonder why nobody on OCRemix uses SMT soundtracks. SMT I and II especially are completely asking for it.
The last boss is pretty hard and most of the people who I've seen disagree with this notion have mentioned grinding for/farming ALL Incenses in the last dungeon. Way to challenge yourself! Despite this, there's a pretty straightforward general concept that can eliminate most of the difficulty, not that that'll help you. But maybe you can look forward to it. Anyway I remember you from an old Dragon Quarter thread so I consider you a cool guy. =b

"Mary"'s Persona is Priestess Mazu, by the way. That's ok, I like to forget she exists too!

Fun fact about her: She's a kogal. It's pretty heavily implied that she engages in what the article describes as "compensated dating." The more you know about underage pseudo prostitution

Ellie tells them. Presumably, and by that I mean this is in no way indicated by any dialogue in the game, she ran into the injured Mumsies and helped her to the shrine for safe keeping, then went to the Hospital to get help.

Gets tortured to feed Nemesis, dies in the Bad Ending.

I'm not sure if his appearance in the sequel is an improvement or not.

I think he looks pretty cool, personally. He could use a shave, but actually I find it weirder that everyone else runs around clean-cut except, like, Toku, who's homeless and all.

Also I can't believe I didn't mention this, when all the Joker users turn into Jokers, you can talk to people at Gatten Sushi who say that one of the patrons started acting crazy, and Chunky knocked him fucking cold (and then the guy got kidnapped). Turns out he has a Persona too in Persona 2, which Baofu picked up on from the beginning. Supposedly he mostly uses it to get information for his work, so I assume it's like a less girly version of Juno from P3.
I like how she's called "Maria" in the localization. I didn't mention Chris' either, which I think is, uhh, this?
Oh yeah, of course. To be fair, I would've forgotten all about the "rescuing Nancy" part but it took me about 3 hours of fighting things on the map before I found out about the L2 Button -> Annotated Map thing, so trying to find that damn shrine really kind of sticks in my mind.

You might say that it's manly. Very manly. A rock hard, throbbing tower of manhood. That spits fire. I guess you could say that his Persona is the giant penis that bursts forth from his chest. (Either Mara or Misaguji-sama would work, thematically. Wikipedia says "Mara ... is a tempter, distracting humans from practicing the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring" which fits in with Toro being a salesman, and Mishaguji-sama is the ancient god of fucking, so...)

Maya says there's going to be a man who has information about Sudou's activities at Parabellum, so there will be!

Hopefully.

Ulala and Baofu are sitting at the bar, drinking. Ulala is a bit surprised to see that, unfortunately, Maya was right and the bar is packed with members of the media ready to chase after this big story. She starts talking to Baofu, complaining about her life and how she doesn't know where she's going.



Maya and Katsuya are across the street, standing next to a shop that we've actually seen once before. Katsuya also tries to strike up a conversation because, you know, Maya doesn't talk so much in this game. He's a little anxious about the plan, since there are certainly a lot of ways it could fail.

He blushes and admits that he worries too much. Then he asks Maya if she ever gets tired of who she is. Maya says "No, I like who I am" (this is a dialogue box again, with the other choice being "I guess sometimes" but that's absurd) and he smiles.

Finally they see somebody strange at the door of the bar. The scene cuts away, and in the reflecting glass of the window they can be seen meeting the man.


Inside, Mizuno notices Maya, but quickly realizes that more importantly, the man who was rumored to come is arriving. Baofu says they'd better get working.

As the scene plays out, the two head over to the door, but Ulala literally doesn't pull any punches. Baofu tries to talk her out of beating the crap out of him, but she won't stop. Having succesfully blocked the exit for long enough for Maya, Katsuya, and the man outside to get away, the pair leave to catch up with them.

The group all meet up in a swank penthouse. The man and woman are introduced to Baofu and Ulala. And the player.

With that out of the way, it's time for business. Nate asks Baofu if he's heard of "Guy Shinjo," reportedly Sudou's secretary. Baofu says he's heard of him, but hasn't been able to find any other information at all. Nate says that there are rumors that Shinjo is actually Guido Kandori. He came to Sumaru to investigate them and put the infamous SEBEC episode to rest once and for all.

Ellen works as a model, but she's followed Wang Long since it took off because of her interest in occult matters, and she came to investigate Chizuru. So Nate explains the plan:

Nate is going to go check out the situation at this lab, bringing the other four Personas with him, while Elly heads to the TV station to stop Chizuru from broadcasting any more rumors.

Nate's bodyguards are loyal to the company above all, and though they serve him, are not pleased with the course of actions he's chosen...

The suite is actually at the "Hotel Pleiades" in the southernmost part of the city, a large bay called Narumi. WOOT MORE SHOPS. The shops are accessed from the south side of the hotel, while Maya can return to the penthouse by entering from the north. The hotel is too classy of course to host a Satomi Tadashi and it doesn't feature medical service either. Not a big loss, honestly.

Ebony is another bar, with another bartender who doubles as the rumormonger. The other main NPC here is a fat Arabic looking-guy. Maya can spread rumors that he collects maps, and after doing so can take his requests to map dungeons as she goes through them. We will not be doing this in this Let's Play, even though going through all that effort will net Maya tons and tons of cards. She also has a rumor that the Cleir-de-Lune restaurant in the hotel sells weapons (and Toku has the competing rumor that it sells armor instead), and that Padparacha can "develop" weapons and armor.

What does that mean?

Since you guys picked Nate instead of Ellen we don't need new weapons and we don't have the materials for new armor for anyone, so Maya will just keep hoarding money for now. I might get involved in Padparacha's stuff later.


The best reason to pick Nate is because he's hilarious. In a kind of stupid way, but his unending hatred of the Satomi Tadashi song is especially funny. (Trivial side note: the one on the right is from the Rengedai shop, which by far sounds the closest to the original song from P1. So he's crazy, basically.)


Nate also wants accessories with the number 1 on them, and suggests to Maya and Ulala that they get a butler for their tiny apartment. Right.

Around town, Mary is missing from Hiiragi again (despite there not being any Nazis around) and Eikichi has suddenly left Sumaru Prison without explaining to anyone.


At Gatten Sushi Nate mentions the time Chunky got taken over by his Persona and Ulala starts to wonder about why Baofu supposedly killed 25 guys too.


At Shiraishi Maya learns that Baofu is a big baseball fan. And at Toa, some woman has stolen her catchphrase.

What the hell.

Finally, at Kismet, Mizuno asks Maya if she was at Parabellum when shit was going down, and why she didn't write anything about it.

Yes, it's better to lie to the angry woman.

Hey, it's time to move the game along now! Outside the sewers is a guy who gives a rumor about a Tsuchinoko

At the Velvet Room, Maya looks at all her options, but she's not ready to splurge a lot of Free Cards even though she knows she'll be making lots of Priestess personas. Instead she just makes Strength Otohime, a water-based Persona, and gives her Frei because Frei is cool but the card is going to be useless soon anyway.

Nate's Persona is Hierophant Aizen Myouou again. Aizen is...not very good, honestly, but he'll do for now. I forgot to grab a screencap of it, but his learned spells are Hama, Sonic Punch, Suku Kaja, Holy Light (weak Light damage), and Maha Magnus by default. He can also learn Maka Kaja through mutations which is more useful but still limited.

Ellen's Persona, since I'll only maybe get around to playing her dungeon, is Judgement Nike (I bet some of you have seen this before!). Also their ultimates since you can only make them in the EX Dungeon (which is another big "maybe" since I haven't played it) are Alfred (Yamaoka) for Nate and Gabriel for Ellen.

The Science Lab is clearly visible on the Narumi map but the security out front is huge, so Nate's plan is to sneak in through the sewers. Inside, he explains the design. There are three Relay Areas and three pairs of tunnels connecting them. The tunnels are washed out every ten minutes. Baofu's impressed by his research, which leads Nate to admit that the Nanjou companies worked on them.


He continues, explaining that they need two people to sit in a control room and open the doors. Baofu gets ready to relegate the tasks (as I'm sure he'd love to) but then a couple more people enter.

It's Chris! (and Mary) With those two at the controls, Maya gets ready to head down the "B" tunnels, and surely this will be no problem-

Ha, just kidding, everything's fine. The sewers are a network of small walkways over the water, with bridges connecting them. The individual parts are pretty short but the encounter rate is obnoxious if you're trying to move quickly.

I couldn't see anything and kept getting washed down the tunnels because my monitor sucks, but all it does is start you at the beginning with a 2-second text box of Nate complaining. It's frustrating if it happens a lot, but fair-ish.

The monsters here are basically the ones from Aoba Park (Jack Frost, Pariker, Archangel, and Ghandarva mostly), plus World Kraken and Tower Kanaloa, who block Water and one of them appears in almost every encounter. As such, this is a better place to farm cards than experience for this party, and boy did Maya rack up a lot of cards! (I hope)


My favorite demons here are Hanged Man Kabandas, because they look goofy and make funny sounds. They also respond to Baofu's wiretapping, which is always funny.

The Tsuchinoko spawns only in the third set of tunnels. It's got a pretty high rate of appearance as far as I can tell, since I've run into it twice effortlessly. It has high magic defense or something as far as I can tell, making Nate the most useful character while fighting it since he's the only one who can do decent physical damage. The party receives a "Dead Tsuchinoko" for killing it which makes sense but is honestly a little blunt for this sort of game. There's some other stuff here, like a Mithril Silver (material for Padparacha) and a Plasma Sword which is probably for Nate (as if he needs a new weapon).

At the end of the third section is an exit to the Parking Lot, where the party sees a security guard patrolling. They spend a moment trying to figure out how to deal with him, and Ulala's quick mind jumps to a conclusion.

Just as she's about to go and do it, Baofu jumps in front of her and flings his coins at the guy, knocking him out instead. Everyone gets ready to move into the lab, but Katsuya pulls the disappointed Ulala away for a second.


Next Time: ラヴ　ビーム！

What a man, what a man.

He wants to be the very best, like no one ever was. To catch them is his noble quest, to train them is his cause.

Err hmm, I guess that's already falling apart. And that's assuming I remember even that much accurately!

Hey remember when Digital Devil Saga 1 used that exact same flooding sewer scenario? Good times.

Also who the hell builds a sewer like that?

Yeah, except it wasn't based on real-time so you didn't get screwed out of a significant chunk of time every time you got into a battle. And the music was better.

On the other hand, the cruise ship in this game is way better.

Obviously they only kind of want to keep people out of the lab, though. I mean, if there were absolutely NO way in that would just be too suspicious.

Too bad the Nanjou Corporation didn't put in a simple way to bypass the entire thing. Thanks for nothing Nate.

I would like to agree, but since it segways into the worst dungeon in the game, I can't.

Nate points out a room that's directly inside from the Parking Lot-it's a security room, with visual surveillance over the entire lab. Walking inside, they hear someone being questioned by a couple more guards.

They're about to commit acts of senseless violence against him, but Maya intervenes. The next battle is pretty much just a random encounter against two of these guys, who die extremely quickly and easily.

After that, Eikichi explains that he jumped the fence to save Sugimoto, who was captured after supposedly using the Joker Curse. Supposedly Michelle himself was the target, but he feels a sense of duty towards all of his flock. Even the really, really stupid ones. He wants to come with the party to look for him, and Baofu and Nate let him come along despite their worries that he'll just be a hindrance.


There's a Trish's Fountain here (there's one in the Air Museum, too) and a Velvet Room. Nate recognizes and hates her (though she's called "Kelly" in Revelations and her dollar-adjusted prices are hilariously low) and Eikichi thinks it seems familiar...but he can't figure out why.


On the basement level is a large containment facility for many of the Jokers. Michelle stupidly opens all the doors looking for Sugimoto, and when he's not there, Nate orders him to take all of the Jokers to the truck so they can be taken care of at a Nanjou-owned hospital. He's not sure they can be saved, but he feels a need to try.

To progress further, Maya needs to find a scientist with an access card. Pretty easy. He's not happy about what happens at the facility, and when Nate explains that they're trying to help, he happily hands it over and says there are others who feel the same way he does.


On 1F again, the big "puzzle" of this dungeon begins. There are two sets of gates: A and B. Maya can set all the B gates open or all the A gates open. Each setting makes some areas unreachable, so it's necessary to toggle them a few times.


On 2F and 3F a level 2 keycard is needed, which is in the possession of the scientist you can barely see on the other side of this border. He's actually very easy to reach, though. After getting the keycard, there's one more thing that can be done: fixing the elevator. Maya needs a Fuse Box Key to turn the power back on, but to find out about it requires demon rumors. The rumor says that Rasputin has the key, so then Maya would need to contract him, and then ask him for the key. Doing so allows her to reach a small room on 2F with a couple of spellcards, which also allows her to finish the map if she were doing it.

I considered doing it for the card that teaches Maragion, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

In the lab on 3F, Baofu begins hacking the computers, trying to pull data and figure out what's going on with all the Jokers. He finds all sorts of freaky shit about "separating Joker from humans" and stuff.

Then, realizing that they don't have all day, he suggests they get moving and says he'll destroy the backups. Ulala sees something in the next room, too...


Inside a large metal apparatus with the word "JOKER" written on it opens and reveals this frightening oozy black stuff. The lights come on and they're joined by somebody else. Lots of somebodies, actually, including a ton of guards and Eikichi.


Nate asks Guido how he's still alive, and he replies that there's still research to be done, and he shouldn't be talking when there's still science to do.

Just kidding.

Baofu appears to slide the computer under the balcony Kandori is standing on, but he shoots anyway. Right when he does so, however, the door opens and blocks the bullets. In a brief firefight, the party escapes the room, and PANTS confronts Kandori.