#Li plays P5T
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"Guys, holy fuck" - Part 2
Hit the image limit on the other post so I broke it up so I could scream more. XD
So where were we?
Right, right, Shadow Toshiro.
Once the shadow goes down the first time, he goes one-winged angel and turns into a god damn horror monster version of Eri that is GIANT. And that, my dudes, was a fight. That thing had so much health. It was great. :D
Now for some info:
Okay, that makes sense.
Yep, all that, we’ve seen and understood already. Still good.
But why, though? What makes her different? Why can she switch forms? Why is she still basically a separate entity from him? Did you just not want to lose your new character? I almost feel like I’d rather have had a P4 boss fight that ended with Toshiro getting his persona, and have Erina just be his cognitive Eri, based on his memories. Because this is… confusing. Nothing has worked like this in the past, unless I seriously overlooked something.
Yeah, I know, Aki and Mai and Ideal Maki were a thing, but Maki was a Wild Card and also had the DEVA system bolstering her cognition. No one else’s persona has been able to turn into a person and just chill with everyone after their awakening. Erina is basically her own fully-formed person. Like… I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it.
All right, yeah, let’s go with that for now.
There’s like, a slight implication here that Toshiro’s shadow wasn’t actually his shadow, but just something pretending to be his shadow? Especially since he never like, reconciled with it. After the giant Eri, it just disappeared. But I only pinged that after the fact, because while we’re just standing here trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Erina, god shows up to yell at us.
“Be not afraid” and all.
I kid you not, I was internally screaming, “YALDABAOTH? IS HE POSSESSED BY THE REMNANTS OF YALDABAOTH TRYING TO SEIZE POWER AGAIN?” But no, doesn't have Yald's stupid feet. This is:
Who the fuck is you, and why does it look like your head exploded off your neck? Are you sure you’re not Yald?
Anyway, this bitch keeps calling us “children” and “lambs” and “pathetic” while it explains who the fuck it is.
I don’t like it, and it doesn’t like our persona abilities. It calls them a “mask of madness, one which will assuredly drive man to ruin.” So it offers a deal: It can remove our powers, and along with them, our memories of this whole horrible adventure, and in exchange, it will put us safely back in the real world. It’s nice like that, even though we’re “infidels who had the audacity to defy a god.”
Hey. You. Got some bad news about all the other gods I’ve met. Wanna know what happened to them? :3
But we shouldn’t answer now! We’re high off a lucky win and our emotions are compromised. We should think it over and tell it our answer when we’re ready. And then Salmael fucks off into the sky. Are we sure that’s not a weird misspelling of Samael? Are you connected to Shido somehow?
Toshiro gets like a thousand points for being completely chill about a god falling out of the sky to tell us we suck. Zenkichi was a lot less calm about the whole thing. XDDD The Thieves, Toshiro, and Erina agree that they’re not giving up their powers, so we’re gonna have to kill god again. But how? How do we follow god into the sky? Whatever shall we do?
Oh, guys. Do you hear that noise?
CHOO CHOO, MOTHERFUCKERS.
Lavenza is here in the Velvet Room Train to pick us up and take us to the sky. No, she doesn’t know why it’s like that all of a sudden. We DO NOT CARE. THIS IS GREAT. Toshiro almost manages to offend her, but we’ve got things to do, so we just put another pin in that.
And that is where I had to stop. It asked me if I wanted to save and I was like “yes, I cannot handle any more Epic right now.” My GOD. I’m so excited Lavenza gets to be more involved, because that’s how I tend to characterize her. She wants to be more hands-on than her siblings or Igor. And she’s not afraid to snark at the others. It’s nice to have the whole team in the Velvet Room again. ^_^
Never change, Yusuke. :P
Actually, isn't this a good thing? If Akira's Velvet Room is now manifesting as a train, maybe that symbolizes him moving forward into the future? Scramble put him back in prison, but this game hasn't. Maybe this is the Velvet Room's final form for him?
Next time: Into the goddamn abyss to once again dethrone god, I guess????
Final note: I’m constantly amused by the one-off poses the sprites have. One single use of the sprite where Makoto’s hugging Morgana. One of Toshiro holding Erina/Yuki. And now apparently one of Makoto throttling Ryuji so he can’t interrupt Futaba and Toshiro. X’D Wow. Pls stop picking on Ryuji, Atlus.
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Giggling at this screenshot I got because I hit the button while Joker was mid-blink. He looks so done with everything, and things have barely started. Sumi and Goro are concerned, and Joker's just like:
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Today on P5T, I have several questions. I also shake my fist at Atlus a bunch for reasons unrelated to those questions.
My dear darling Lavenza has come up with a ritual that allows us to combine two personas to forge into weapons. The weapons are expensive, but they’re better than the ones in the shop, and it solves my problem of buying/selling weapons being in two separate menus. Now I can do it all in the Velvet Room!
Lavenza is also anthropomorphizing the forge. Some people have dolls. Some people have Featherman action figures. Lavenza has heavy forge equipment.
Erina is also having a minor existential crisis, and I’m kind of impressed they brought this up. Because… yeah. Erina might not be a real person? But I don’t think we’ve had a cognition that’s like… this real. So it’s going to be really upsetting if we have to lose her in the end because she’s not “real”. But the Thieves promise that no matter what, she’s their friend.
The squad hanging out in Leblanc is super cute. We’re making sure Yusuke is fed, we’re playing Tycoon with the actual cards… So I can only assume that Akira manifested them out of his head for them, since they were from the Thieves Den. XD
Yusuke contemplates love, Morgana worries about whether he or Ann is more of a prince, and we go on a whole quest to resolve it.
It turns out okay in the end.
Erina is getting some character development in the direction of being slightly less reckless, and Toshiro is getting some physical development in being a little less of a wimp. But that’s not going to save the pair of them from the horrible names that both of them keep coming up with for these missions. XD
We go on a few missions to free more townsfolk and disrupt more garrisons, and once we have enough backup, Toshiro and Futaba put together a plan to storm the castle. Once again, we ask the townsfolk to be a distraction while we infiltrate through a secret passage. But this time, instead of going out in disguises, it’s the townsfolk who are going to be dressed up. Thanks to Yusuke and the owner of the silk shop, everyone is ready to confuse the hell out of the guards, and it’s great.
Seriously questioning if all Persona security cameras have this weird eye motif and I’m just reading too much into it.
It becomes very obvious that Yuki is attached to and protective of Toshiro, for reasons that make me think that this lady represents his mom. Once we get into the castle, she makes a comment about how it’s different than it was last time she was there, which makes me think his mom left his dad? Toshiro says she passed away, but maybe that was after she left, or maybe his dad just told Toshiro she died?
This castle is really cool, though. All painted screens and floral and stuff.
Toshiro and Yuki head off together to find a path through the new castle layout while the Thieves hold off the guards. They find this really cool door, which opens basically from Toshiro’s thoughts.
The door leads them to… the rooftop amusement park from Ai: the Somnium Files? Toshiro goes into a full-blown panic attack? There’s a woman’s voice screaming at him, blaming him for something, and he thinks whatever “it” is, is his fault, because he “lied”? Yuki is almost definitely a representation of his mother???
But the Thieves are on the way, and the next battle is nigh, and so let’s just save the game and--
…….ATLUS. YOU CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS. STOP STEALING THINGS BEFORE I FINISH MY FICS.
Anyway! ^_^;;;
My only real observation for today is that the Kingdoms so far seem to be following vaguely the same vibes as the Palaces. Big dramatic European castle, Feudal Japan themes… if the next one is vaguely like the Bank, I’m gonna have questions. XDDD
Tomorrow, we take out this amusement park, and hopefully beat the shit out of Yoshiki!
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Last night on P5T, we wear some excellent costumes, throw some people off buildings, have some alcohol, and actually take baby steps towards acknowledging that this is, in fact, a sequel!
To help out Yuki while we’re trapped in this world, we’re going to storm a garrison to hack into one of the banks of security cameras that keep an eye on everything in the city. They’re also going to free all the people trapped in that dungeon. But, because of all the cameras, they can’t just go out and walk through the city, so it’s time for disguises! And everyone looks great in their kimonos and guard uniforms! They even let Ann wear the guard uniform because she thinks that would be cool.
Toshiro is also being forced to acknowledge that what the Phantom Thieves were doing back in their world parallels how they just overthrew Marie in the previous Kingdom. So he really can’t condemn the kids for their actions.
One of the sidequests that we get at this point is from Yusuke. We did a tutorial for followup attacks, where you kick people off the roof and a teammate waiting below can shoot at them. And now Yusuke is very eager to get a better look at people mid-fall. So… Off we go, apparently.
I love Yusuke so much.
So off to the garrison in disguise it is. The Thieves take a bunch of sake and get the guards to throw a banquet and get drunk while Toshiro, Futaba, Morgana, and Yuki break in and hack the cameras. It’s going great until the guards start being rude to Makoto and some of the little hat guys. She is two seconds from breaking character as a geisha and beating the shit out of them, but Akira, knowing that some of the sake bottles they brought had water in them, has a fantastic idea:
I’ve never been so happy to see a dialogue option. XDDDD We still have to fight eventually, but not before Makoto drinks a guard under the table. And Yusuke looks so cool in his outfit.
Futaba and crew free the prisoners, she broadcasts the conditions in the labor camps to the oblivious citizens, and we get the hell out of dodge. When we get back outside, we run into Lord Yoshiki, who is giving off some major Yaldabaoth vibes.
And he comes with a dramatic revelation!
I don’t know why I’m surprised. Like, of course the other shadowy figure from the beginning is his father. Of course. And this man, just like Marie, is an absolutely horrible person. Like, I have a personal reason to hate him…
...but he’s also a shit parent. He’s low-key enough that no one apparently pays attention to what he’s up to, but he’s been setting up Toshiro to be Prime Minister since he was a child. And the abuse is not just emotional this time. His father hit him if he questioned him or didn’t obey.
The game actually bothers to explicitly mention Shido and the things that happened last year! Atlus! Look at you! I’m so proud! Maintaining narrative continuity! I’m gonna be really impressed if the Thieves ever mention Maruki. Because this is definitely post-Royal for sure 100% because they showed Joker with his grappling hook.
Toshiro also remembers why Leblanc seems familiar. He apparently stumbled in one day and it was such a great reprieve from the pressures of being the primary candidate for Prime Minister that he kept going back. He admits that he might have even seen the kids at some point in the past year.
...okay, Goro. Why does Atlus keep including characters in the side games who would bounce off of Goro so well and he’s not even there for it?
He’s got evidence of his father’s misdeeds, though, and he wants to make a deal with the Phantom Thieves. They help him get home, and he’ll make sure his father goes down for his crimes. He does think they need a real reward, and has a crisis trying to come up with something for them...
...before they tell him that the bad guy going down is reward enough. I'll take some jewels, though.
So I can’t wait to beat the shit out of Yoshiki. I dunno where we’re gonna go after that, but this is great so far. P5 always does a great job of making the villains so punchable. It does raise some interesting implications of the future Prime Minister knowing the identities of 8/10 Phantom Thieves. At the very least, he can make sure that something like Scramble doesn’t happen. They won’t get accused of bullshit they didn’t do.
I am a little more annoyed now that Sumi, at least, hasn’t been mentioned. Goro at this point in the story, they think he’s gone. Of course they wouldn’t mention him. But Sumi is still around? If Atlus didn’t want her in the Kingdom for whatever reason, the game literally started with one of the Thieves arriving to Leblanc in the rain. Just throw in a line about how she’s running late, and she doesn’t get there before shit gets weird. It’s not that hard!
But we’ll see how it goes, I guess!
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Yesterday on P5T, it’s a nice day for a white wedding~
Namely, Joker fantasizing about his wedding. And my gosh am I happy that you can fantasize about marrying any of your teammates.
I watched them all, and I’m impressed that they’re all actually well-done? Like, damn. Good job, Atlus. They’re all a little silly, of course, but there’s some genuine moments in all of them. Now I’m even more annoyed that Goro and Sumi aren’t here. Akira’s just as close to them, if not closer in some ways. This isn’t even real, it’s all in Joker’s head, so like, it’s not like the other Thieves would be uncomfortable if he was an option.
So we broke the rest of the rebel army out of prison, and now we’re finally ready to take the fight to Marie directly!
(As far as you remember, Ann! *cries in PQ2* *cries louder in Hours*)
These two are such a fun team. And Toshiro’s finally growing a spine, with everyone’s support. This war sequence is great. We gave the little hats cannons!
The Rebel Corps is going to keep the main army distracted so the Thieves, Toshiro, and Erina can get into the castle itself and go after Marie. So they make it in, and find a projector revealing part of Toshiro’s missing memories. Apparently she is both his fiancee, and one of the shadowy figures from the beginning. Turns out, the real Marie, Marie Anto, is a CEO’s daughter that his father arranged for him to marry. As I told Po when I was texting her about it, Toshiro’s family gets money, Marie’s family gets power, Marie gets to be the wife of a future Prime Minister, and Toshiro gets… emotional abuse. X’’’D
We get to have a brawl in the fancy dining room, though, so that’s awesome.
After that, we find a creepy bear in a hallway that represents Marie’s view of Toshiro, and it gives him a major wakeup call about how he’s acted and how people see him. It steels his resolve to go after Marie, and he’s ready to push forward.
Also the sprite of Makoto grabbing Morgana after the bear starts talking is adorable.
So now it’s into the chapel to face Marie! And she’s a terrible person. But we knew that! And Toshiro finally finds the courage to stand up to her, which pisses her off enough to provoke her into a fight.
She throws exploding bouquets, tries to run us over with her tank, and keeps using that stupid collar and chain to single out one of your fighters to drag them in front of the tank and target them. It’s a tough fight and it requires a lot of maneuvering, but it was good!
After a certain point, she full-heals herself, and while she’s gloating, Toshiro has a spark of inspiration and runs off. This man gets into the rafters and drops the chapel bell on Marie once we get her in position. Get rekt, lady.
She whines and cries about how she was just taking what she deserved. Yeah, yeah. But then as she fades, she ends on this ominous note:
But we’ve won! It’s all good! Erina makes the announcement that the Kingdom is free, and so many rebels flood into the room to celebrate that we lose Yusuke somewhere in the mob. XDDD
Finally, we can approach the door at the back of the chapel. The same as the door that brought us here. It’s time to take Toshiro and go home, knowing that Erina and her world are safe now. Akira opens the door, and the Thieves walk through…
...into Feudal not-Japan.
Toshiro gets recognized as a wanted criminal after trying to help a young lady being bullied by soldiers, and the young lady leads us to safety in the hallowed halls of… Leblanc. Again. These Kingdoms are centered around Toshiro, so why is Leblanc, of all things, showing up repeatedly?
...what?
But we’re putting a pin in that and going inside. This girl’s name is Yuki, once again the only person in a world of hats. They’re lucky they’re cute, or this would be really weird.
The Kingdom is ruled over by a beatific tyrant named Lord Yoshiki, who takes the appearance of an all-loving Buddha. The citizens adore him, because if they don’t, they’re whisked off to the “Labor of Love”: a work camp.
Erina, who came with us on accident after sticking her head through the door to try to catch a glimpse of our world, wants to help free these people, too. And the Thieves theorize that if there was a door in Marie’s castle, there’s probably one here as well. Lavenza doesn’t know what’s going on, no one has any better ideas, so we’re set up and ready to topple another corrupt ruler. Who, let’s be real, is probably the other shadowy person from the opening.
.
So, still having a good time with this! Interesting that the second… person… oh man, THIS is the game where we needed to call them Monarchs, jesus Atlus. Anyway, interesting that the second Monarch is also on about a twisted form of love. I wonder if this is gonna be a recurring thing?
The sidequests are genuinely tricky, and are more puzzle-like than the main story battles. It’s actually really fun to figure out how to work the mechanics to reach the goal they’re asking for.
I do wish that you could just sell your old weapons in the shop menu, or buy new weapons from the Velvet Room. Having to leave the shop, go into the Velvet Room, sell the weapons, and then come back to buy the gun I couldn’t afford was a little weird.
I really like Erina as a character so far. She seems at least a few years older than the Thieves, but not by much, and it’s nice to see how she fits in with the group without being a Thief herself. Not that she doesn’t want to be; it’s cute seeing her trying to summon a persona when no one is looking. (Love the dialogue option to just yell “Persona!” back at her. XD) I genuinely don’t know if she’s going to have a persona in the end. Toshiro, maybe. Zenkichi got one, after all. But Zenkichi also had a few more points in his favor in terms of likeability when I was 13 hours into Scramble. XDDDD At least the wet blanket has upgraded to merely damp.
I am rethinking that Erina is his kid. Like, she’s clearly connected to him somehow. If the Monarchs are people he knows in the real world, the rebel leaders (using that term loosely for Yuki) are probably people he knows, too. But this man does not have a speck of Dad Energy anywhere in him. He’s not even up to uncle status right now. He is not invited to Coffee Dad’s Coffee and Dads Meetup. XD
So, with the Thieves still trapped in the metaverse, and the future uncertain, we press on. But at least one person is having a good time.
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Last night on P5T, the sky is a clockwork hell, but it’s okay, because we’re doing the traditional P5 information cutscene! And as usual… we still don’t manage to clear up everything!
(Seriously. I will never stop making fun of the fact that the post-Plan cutscene is a 2 hour infodump and STILL doesn’t answer everything. XD)
Anyway, it’s nice to have everyone together in the Velvet Room.
Lavenza fits in great with the rest of the Thieves. Now if only we could convince her to come fight with us, we’d have no problems getting through anything else in our way. ;)
But she can at least shed some light on what Salmael is, because as usual, it’s a manifestation of a human instinct gone berserk.
Congrats, kids, on reaching a point where we can discuss Yaldabaoth by name! Scramble's timeline never managed that. XD
According to Lavenza, unlike the God of Control, which came from people’s desires to be idle and leave all the decisions up to someone else, Salmael is the personification of humanity’s self-preservation instinct.
Which makes sense, in terms of Persona final bosses. It makes as much sense as the personification of the desire for bonds, or the personification of the desire for solitude, so we’re all good so far. But, hm. They keep talking about what makes it different from the God of Control, but…
…...who does THAT sound like, Atlus? Hm? Is this a god damn sequel or not? It has to be Royal’s universe. Joker’s got his grappling hook, Morgana and the others know Lavenza already, but you are just determined not to mention Maruki at all even though this is definitely his MO. This thing isn’t like Yaldabaoth, but it is like Maruki! So why are you willing to mention one god by name, but avoid the other entirely? You’re exhausting, Atlus. Honestly. X’’’D
GEE, MORGANA, I WONDER WHAT PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WOULD INFORM THAT OPINION?
Anyway, Lavenza explains that the Kingdoms are a structure that, the way she describes it, sounds like a halfway point between a Dungeon/Palace and something like Tartarus. A place constructed by a cognitive god, but from the cognition of a single person. Under normal circumstances, Salmael would have been able to infiltrate Toshiro’s mind and take over. But because his latent potential was already stirring, it couldn’t overpower him that easily, so it used his cognition to create and populate this distortion in an effort to break his will.
And Toshiro’s spark of rebellion was inspired by the broadcast hijack. <3
So Salmael built the Kingdoms, and created the Rulers as fragments of itself, dressed up in the image of Toshiro’s memories to mentally wear him down.
I… think this implies that Shadow Toshiro was another one of Salmael’s creations? Which reads as true to me. I don’t think Toshiro ever blamed Eri for what happened. I think he blamed himself. So his shadow wouldn’t want to kill Eri. But a god focused on stamping out any hint of rebellion would.
It also, according to Lavenza, took shadows from the Sea of Souls and turned them into its Legionnaires, which is why when we destroy them, they drop gears with the essences of the original demons/personas that we can then use for fusion. Which makes sense!
And, after realizing that it wasn’t managing to wear Toshiro down just by waging war in his mind, it pulled his real self into the metaverse to break him directly.
Now, Erina.
Lavenza says that she is the cognitive embodiment of Toshiro’s feelings of hope and resistance, taking on the form of the person who inspired him. And he subconsciously entrusted his unawakened powers of persona to her to help her fight back against Salmael, which is why she can do magic like the Thieves.
Lavenza says that in this state, she was essentially a cognitive being with an inner persona. She was protecting Toshiro’s subconscious and will of rebellion where he couldn’t.
All of that is… fine. It’s fine. It’s a little fast and loose, but it’s the sort of thing that’s okay if you gloss over some of the details. After all, we know a shadow that gained enough of an ego to develop a persona, and we know cognitions that grew so powerful that they overwhelmed a Palace in the ruler’s place, and we know cognitive gods that lived as humans, amnesiac or not. So a cognition trusted with the power of its creator’s persona is something I can grasp.
The fact that she, herself, is considered his persona and how they implement it afterwards is what bothers me.
You can still send both of them into battle. Erina operates completely independently from Toshiro, still has her own magic and uses her own skills, and just… disappears briefly when Toshiro needs her to be Ernesto. That’s really not how I would have done it.
One option would be to say that he’s taken his power back from her now that he’s strong enough to stand on his own. He can fight with Ernesto, and she can fight with just her guns and melee (or say that some of the power still lingers with her so she can still do magic, idk). OR, if they’re gonna insist that she is Ernesto and not just a cognition wielding Ernesto’s power, then you can’t have both out there at the same time. It makes so much less sense to have her running around as normal and just being a persona when convenient. If you want her still running around as a person during cutscenes, fine, I can accept that, but if she’s gonna be his persona then she needs to be his persona during battle.
I don’t know, it all just feels so much messier than it needs to be. It feels like it’s literally just that they wanted to keep Erina around as her own character after the reveal, and they did it in the most convoluted way possible.
But, anyway, Lavenza has crashed the train into the final area and I’m just now realizing how very close they’re skirting to another entry on the stolen things list. Not quite, though, thankfully, or I’d be getting even more unhinged. What’s the next step up in unhinged-ness from “lorekeeper”?
Loving Erina’s enthusiasm despite the clockwork hellscape, though. XDDDD
Salmael is summoning metal versions of bosses past to stop us (hm. metal versions. Hmmmm), and so far I’ve beaten Marie. The kids have come to the realization that Salmael is targeting Toshiro specifically because he’s the most likely to be the next prime minister, and therefore would have the most influence on the people. So like Yaldabaoth using Shido, really.
Toshiro blames himself for the real-world Marie being as bad as she was because he didn’t stand up to her, and we get a lovely reminder that Akira can be a horrible little goblin if you let him. :3
And Lavenza offers us a set of challenges to unlock everyone’s final skills, because she can’t fight us herself, as much as she wants to.
Which I can’t really complain about, because as much as I love my darling attendant here, she is a little cheater. Gimmick boss fight without explaining what the gimmick is, or that it even exists in the first place? Mean, Lavenza. There’s a reason I never beat her bonus boss fight in Royal. It’s the only one I never beat.
Anyway, final notes. I love Erina and Yusuke’s little drawings to “help” illustrate what’s being talked about. Absolutely delightful.
Overall, a pretty solid explanation of what’s been going on, but getting it all at once is still a little much, and as usual, there’s still things it didn’t answer. How did it pull Toshiro into the metaverse? How did it pull the Thieves into the metaverse? Toshiro had already been imprisoned by Cognitive Marie for a while when they got there, so what separate thing dragged in the Thieves (and Lavenza)? It would be weird for Salmael to bring them in and risk them freeing Toshiro. Just take care of them after you break him. You’re a god; why do you need to rush?
And I love the idea of Toshiro subconsciously fighting back against Salmael’s attempts to get in his head. Honestly, if it had been a cognitive space that Toshiro constructed, instead of one made by Salmael to break him, I’d say it lines up very well with my version of a cognitive Stronghold. Which, I’m not even gonna put that on the stolen stuff list, because I like being validated in my overall worldbuilding choices. XDDDD
Metal Yoshiki is probably next, but I think I’m gonna see what Lavenza’s challenges are, first. She better not be cheating again. :’’’D
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@loopingpyre
Putting under a readmore for Tactica spoilers.
Persona 2's characters were, like Maki, all functionally Wild Cards. So you can fudge that a little. But this whole thing around Toshiro is something new, with very little explanation on why his thing works differently from anything in previous games. I know Atlus plays fast and loose with their lore at times (because I've spent years trying to untangle it), but there's usually some connecting thread to how things have worked previously.
Toshiro's persona being basically its own person just seems weird to me, when it would have been more consistent with prior stuff in P5 to have the shadow, and then a separate cognitive entity. Erina didn't need to be his persona for the story to make sense, and the fact that she is seems like a strange choice when I think it just makes things more confusing.
Plus, Erina coming with them was basically a fluke. If she'd stayed in her Kingdom, we'd have some major problems.
Rules that are at least partially consistent doesn't seem like too much to ask. But I'm really into worldbuilding and how things work, so that's just me.
Nanjo's ultimate taking the form of his butler who passed away can make sense. That was someone important to him, who genuinely cared about him and had a huge effect on his life. Cendrillon taking on aspects of Sumire's memory of Kasumi when she fully awakens follows the same thread. So if Toshiro's persona took on aspects of Eri, that's cool! There's a thread there!
But my point is more that versions of Yamaoka and Kasumi weren't walking around the metaverse with them after their awakenings. The personas were not their own people with their own character and desires and goals.
The only time that's really been the case was like... Pharos/Ryoji/Thanatos. But Ryoji's not an aspect of Minato. He was an outside entity.
And mechanically, a Wild Card is just someone who can use multiple personas. So with that in mind, technically the casts of 1 and 2 count, even if the term itself hadn't been invented yet from a Doylist perspective. So I think it's fair to look at things from that angle when considering how all of this cognitive stuff works. But again, I'm a worldbuilding person. I want to draw all those connections.
I noticed that his glove was missing but I don't think they ever talked about his hand being injured??? Unless it was early on and I've forgotten. Like, I see it in the screenshot but I don't think they talked about it. And if the glove is replacing the mask, cool. They haven't actually mentioned that (yet?) either.
And "different world different rules" would be fine if they'd bothered to explain any of the rules! But the kids literally have no idea how any of this has happened.
What is Erina? How does she work? We don't really know.
How do the Kingdoms work? We don't really know.
Why is Toshiro's mental world so much bigger and weirder than anything since Ideal Mikage-cho? We don't know.
How did the kids even end up here? We don't know.
I feel like at the point in the story where I've met the final boss, I should know a little more than that. Or at least be able to extrapolate.
And... I hope I don't come across as upset. I'm not; I like discussing lore stuff! But I gotta admit it was a little off-putting to see a comment starting with, essentially, "Hi, it doesn't work like that," considering how much thought I've put into figuring out how it all works. ^_^;;;
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"Guys, holy fuck" - Part 1
Yesterday on P5T, we reached the end of the third kingdom. And man, I really wish I’d gotten to this point while I was still over at Po’s house, because it would have been nice to have someone to scream along with me while I frantically hit the button on my phone camera at lightspeed.
Atlus, what R U doing?
Well, first of all, we’ve got two more keys to get, and more of Toshiro and Eri’s story to uncover. The last two keys are a letter of challenge, and a recorder.
So what happened, is that Eri sent vice-principal Nakabachi the letter of challenge. They confronted him about what he was doing, and he basically laughed them off. Said that there was nothing they could do without any proof, and there was no way that they’d be able to get the other students to come forward because they were too scared of the blackmail he had on them.
So Toshiro came up with a plan.
They talk to the other students, and call the vice-principal to the roof. He thinks they’re going to grovel, but they confront him again. This time, with the other students backing them up. All of them, standing together!
The vice-principal laughs. He says that it’s still their word against his, and he will ruin their futures if they dare try to do anything else or tell anyone.
And Toshiro says, wow, didn’t think it would be that easy. And holds up the recorder. A full confession, spoken by the man himself. It’s exactly what they need.
In the present, Toshiro tells the Thieves that Nakabachi was fired. The revolution worked. And now they have all four keys, and its time to go to the locked music room and take out the ruler of this place! So they head up, unlock the door, and confront Nakabachi.
He turns into some big round robot that looks like a head, and the “rules” are not to use any skills. Somehow I teleported Erina over onto his platform earlier than planned, and ended up being able to hammer on him like that, so it actually wasn’t that bad of a fight. I’ve gotten some good personas by now, too. So, the ruler goes down! All is well! ...except he’s not down, because he’s not Nakabachi at all. He’s someone else. And he’s kidnapped Erina, and has another memory to reveal to Toshiro.
When they made their accusations against Nakabachi public, everyone jumped on board. Even the students who had never actually been victims. Students who were punished for things they actually did, students who had just gotten a “bad vibe” from him, people were making things up, even, just to be part of the pack. They were even harassing the man at his house after he was dismissed from the school. And he snapped under the strain of the constant harassment. He found Toshiro and Eri waiting for the train one evening, out of his mind, and pushed Eri in front of a train.
Toshiro tried to catch her, but couldn’t in time.
And he feels so guilty. He thinks it was all his fault. If he hadn’t stirred up this rebellion, if they hadn’t confronted the vice-principal, Eri wouldn’t have gotten hurt. She survived, but was in the hospital for a long time. No wonder he was burying all of this.
The students who harassed Nakabachi got in trouble, and most of the student body ended up blaming Toshiro. Because clearly they wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if Toshiro and Eri hadn’t led them to rebel in the first place. Which is complete bullshit, but, y’know, people trying to find a scapegoat.
And now that Toshiro remembers all of this, the rebels of the Kingdom turn on him and become Legionnaires, and are finally able to call him by name.
(And I gotta laugh at the letters that were visible right before they speak the whole thing. XD)
After a “survive X turns” battle (where I just barely scraped by without anyone getting KO’d), Toshiro is a wreck. To the point that he asks the Thieves to leave him behind, because if he keeps fighting, it’s just going to end with them getting hurt this time. And he doesn’t want that. He says that he might as well stay behind, and just--
And Futaba slaps the shit out of him before he can finish that thought. Because Futaba knows what it’s like to feel so terrible about a situation that you just want to die. And she’s not letting someone else fall in that pit. So everyone makes it back to the hideout in one piece.
We recover, we mentally fortify ourselves, we talk Toshiro down from the edge of a full-blown mental breakdown. Lavenza summons us to tell us that something is getting stronger. And it’s very malevolent. But she doesn’t know what it is. Vagueness is coming! Please stop taking after your great-grandfather, Lavenza. If you must, take after him from when he was actually helpful.
So anyway, with no clues about the malevolent vagueness, we head for the student council room, where Shadow Toshiro is waiting with Erina.
Gotta admit, I’m a little annoyed that the eyes of his sprite aren’t gold. Like, come on. COME ON. Atlus. Please. First your weird stepchild Velvet attendant and now this? But man oh man has he got stage presence. And he wants Erina dead. Toshiro is horrified by this, but the whole school crumbles to reveal like, a dramatic clocktower and stuff, and the shadow strings up Erina and tells Toshiro that as soon as they kill the stain that Eri left on him, everything will be better.
The Thieves sprint in to try to help, but he’s rigged a trap. He’s got these bandage things that he can control, and the Thieves get tied up and are left unable to reach them. Akira drops his dagger and manages to kick it to Toshiro (with a voiced line of dialogue!), but Toshiro can’t move.
Right up until the shadow gets ready to blast Erina. Then he is up, he is grabbing the dagger, he is throwing it right through the shadow’s hand. We love this man’s character development. God damn. The bandage things drop Erina over the side of the clock tower, and Toshiro lunges to catch her. He saves her, the way he didn’t manage to save Eri.
And now Erina knows who she is.
His persona. Somehow.
Even though his shadow is right there.
So we’re going to stop for a second while the Thieves have a dramatic fight against Shadow Toshiro (who uses an annoying shield). Because what is this place, really? It’s like an extremely complex Dungeon more than anything, I suppose, since it’s about all of this trauma that he’s been keeping buried. But multiple aspects existing simultaneously leans closer to my version of a heart world, and the only other person who’s canonically had a cognitive world with multiple aspects of themselves running around is Maki, who was a Wild Card.
Toshiro’s awakening is also a strange combo of a P4 and P5 awakening. He confronts his shadow and accepts the flaws in himself that he needs to overcome, but he also gets the mask and blood. Which is fine, except that the mask immediately disappears after he pulls it off, he doesn’t get a metaverse outfit, nothing. So… they could have skipped the mask. His awakening wasn’t really a “rebellion” awakening. Just go with P4-style if he wasn’t going to get the full-blown outfit change.
Yes I KNOW I am probably thinking too hard but Blowtorch is metaphorically sitting on my shoulder and we are wondering why the lore isn’t clicking!! XD
(Also the persona’s name is Ernesto, and I’m not really sure I vibe with the inspiration there? Like I get it, but there’s probably better ways to have done this whole thing. Love the design, tho.)
I've hit the image limit, so please hold for part 2. X'D Also, check out Yusuke's fancy new water gun.
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Today on P5T, our wet-blanket adult companion continues to be kind of soggy. Also cake, a grand time in the Velvet Room, and my complete inability to pronounce one of our new skills!
……sir, stop doing that pose. That’s not your pose.
Anyway, apparently it’s fine to namedrop Shido and Yaldabaoth in the notes, but the Thieves are still not allowed to talk about them in actual dialogue. Fingers still crossed we get a Maruki note. Come on, Atlus, you cowards.
The Velvet Room’s forge is finally up and running, so it’s time to fuse some personas. It’s… a little strange, because now each persona has an inherent skill, and then can inherit ONE and ONLY ONE skill from its component personas. Which… kind of sucks, because there’s a lot of good skills. We’re using the sub-persona system from PQ2, but Erina’s not allowed to have one because she doesn’t have a core persona. Lavenza is basically like “something is suppressing the power of the Wild Card, but now everyone can use sub-personas.”
She’s having a grand time working the forge, though. We should let Lavenza have even more heavy equipment and machinery.
She also gives you a smartphone app that allows you to reach the Velvet Room from the battlefield, because sometimes there are multiple battles in a row before you can go back to the hideout. Which, hell yeah, but also, Atlus stealing Jade’s blue phones. Add another thing to the list. XD
(I’m joking, of course, but still. The list of things Atlus has “stolen” is like 15 things long by now. XDDD)
Cute icon, though. (It's so weird to see Lavenza the same height as Akira?)
So far the main difference between Zenkichi and Toshiro (other than the fact that one is primarily called by his first name) is that Toshiro flagrantly does not want to be here. They’re both kind of concerned about the Thieves –
– but Toshiro’s concern absolutely comes from a place of not wanting this, or like, any situations to be happening. He’s constantly wanting to rethink any of the plans that involve danger, he can’t fight, he’s always prepared to run away, and he’s just basically kind of… indecisive? Ryuji admits at least once that he has a good point about not charging in there, but he wants people to listen to him when he’s not really being helpful in the current situation.
He’s willing to listen to orders when it involves leaving, though.
(So does that mean Erina's the Thieves' age? I can’t tell how old anyone is. Toshiro is described as a young politician, so like… early thirties?)
...that works.
So we’ve retrieved Ryuji and Haru after a clash at the armory, which just leaves Makoto and Yusuke under Marie’s control. The scouts bring work that she’s finally making final preparations for her wedding, because she’s found the groom at last!
Place your bets: Is this Yusuke, Akira, or Toshiro? The Thieves think it’s Yusuke, and set off for the town square to rescue both him and Makoto from the terrible fate of marrying this crazy lady. They’re baking a massive cake in the square, and have put the captured rebels in it? This lady is kind of actually the worst, what the fuck.
It’s a trap, of course. Brainwashed Makoto and Yusuke show up, and announce with disgust that Lady Marie doesn’t want a penniless brat like Yusuke, she wants Toshiro! ...thank goodness. Because if she wanted Joker, I’d have even more questions about her mental state. We go bravely into battle to save our friends by capturing the flag, but after a long fight, when Erina charges to plant our banner in place of the destroyed one, she gets shot! There’s blood! And Toshiro definitely knows her at least subconsciously through his amnesia, because THIS is the thing that gets him to stop being a wet blanket, and sprint through a hail of gunfire to get to Erina.
Genuinely thought for a second he was going to get a persona right here. But no, he just makes sure Erina’s stable, snatches up the flag, and charges in to claim the victory.
Despite freeing all the Thieves, the battle has taken a lot out of everyone, and Marie shows up in person with a goddamn army. It’s a bleak situation, and Joker can offer to distract her so everyone can escape, but for once, he doesn’t have to. The other rebels charge so that the Thieves can get Toshiro and Erina to safety, and we all flee back to Leblanc to figure out what to do next.
That’s where I stopped for the evening, with everyone trying to recover from getting beaten half to hell. I’m assuming that now that we have a full company of Thieves, we’re going after Marie directly, so we’ll see how that goes! The battles seemed easy at first, but they’ve been getting more challenging, so I’m curious how a Major Boss Fight will go.
I got a fusion accident in the Velvet Room, and the forge blows up. It’s hilarious even if it means Lavenza got blasted. XD
Morgana has a tearful sprite when you have to leave the rebels behind, continuing the trend of great Morgana faces.
And, finally, one of the skills on Haru's skill tree is a combination of healing and ailment cure. Which makes sense, for the first-level spell, but the second one…
I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I have so much trouble saying that second one. I get it on a theoretical level, but actually saying it out loud is not working. XDDDDDDD I guess they combined these because they didn’t want more branches on the skill tree, but… ugh.
Diaramrita. Why. :’D
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All right, I said I was going to do the DLC, but I realized I should probably like, learn to play the game first.
Goro would be very disappointed in me if I didn't do well.
So, we're starting off with the proper story mode. Let's see how they've justified both this madness, and the inevitable lack of Satanael. XD
I will say, it's neat that Goro and Sumi get their own title screen, with cool music.
Also, shoutout to Atlus for actually having enough space for the canon name this time! They’re learning from past mistakes~ “Akira Kurusu” fits no problem, but “Amamiya” fits with like, 2 spaces to spare.
Anyway, we start off with two mysterious figures in a government office, listening to a report about a politician who has disappeared and talking about how “he” would have to defy them in order to stop them, and “he” won’t do that. Good thing that “he” is probably going to meet my gaggle of children, who defy people as a job. XDDDD
Speaking of my gaggle of children, they’re hanging out and watching the same news report. Apparently this missing dude is a solid candidate for Prime Minister, and an election is coming up. Is this an emergency election because of what happened to Shido? Futaba mentions that it’s cold, and no one has graduated yet, so I’d put this somewhere at the end of February. I guess we won’t know for sure, because goodness, we couldn’t possibly discuss Shido or any prior events with any specifics. No, instead, we just get Futaba being mildly self-aware, after Makoto says that she hopes nothing weird is going on.
Yes, Futaba, we do, because that’s where they’re hiding Goro.
The TV goes weird and they get yoinked into the Kingdom, which is some kind of distortion in meta-space. Literally as soon as they go exploring, they immediately run into soldiers and the “ruler” of the Kingdom, and everything goes to hell.
This is Lady Marie (which they pronounce "Mar-ee-ay"), and she's very Ojou-sama. And she’s kind of terrible. But I like the style. And the spike-tread tank.
Anyway, this lady has the strongest brainwash spells I've ever seen?? Like, Yaldabaoth hit people with that brainwashing Lust attack and I don't even think it ever did anything while I was fighting him?? But she gets hold of every single Phantom Thief except Joker and Mona, and it's bad.
And then, because she can’t get those two, she just… attempts to torture them into submission. To be honest, like, I know they’re in the metaverse and can take more damage, but this is pretty close to the interrogation in terms of brutality. I think the cartoony artstyle (which I do love), is the only reason it doesn’t seem as bad. Because she catches them by their necks and drags them behind her tank. And that’s savage.
Yeah. Violence!
Fortunately Erina comes to save them, and I like Erina so far. She’s pretty cool, and she lives in cogntive Leblanc, much to Akira and Morgana’s surprise.
Erina makes a deal that she'll help them save the brainwashed Thieves if Akira and Morgana join the rebels and help her get rid of Marie. Which, yeah, I want to beat this bitch senseless now, so... Let's do it. Leblanc is the rebels' hideout, so all the menus are there. We have skill trees for each person now that let you upgrade your personas and passive skills (and Erina's... magic? She can do light magic, but it's not kouha). Lavenza is there, and appears to be having a good time in the new Velvet Armory, though she does mention that she made some kind of "mistake" that caused her to get dragged in with you. So that's a little concerning.
I'm glad Morgana gets to come with you, because that's just proof that the third semester actually happened.
Yes, sweetheart, you're doing great. <3
She also offers to make you weapons with the forge, with one caveat:
I love her so much. XDDDD
So, we get some intel from the other rebels that there are new prisoners being held at the prison on the edge of the city. So we head over to rescue our friends! We do not find our friends. Instead, we find up-and-coming young Diet member Toshiro Kasukabe, who has been missing from the real world and was clearly tossed in here by… someone. He’s taking this rather well, though. Hasn’t screamed at us like a certain other adult. :3
...sir, I’m the only one here who’s NOT a magician.
We end up having to fight brainwashed Panther and Oracle to escape, which was a hell of a fight. I learned that Joker getting womped doesn’t end the battle, which is good, but also, people who get KO’d get removed from the field, and there doesn’t seem to be revival skills in the skill tree, so I’m assuming once they’re out, they’re out.
Marie tried to bait me into attacking my own damn sister, which is not helping my desire to kick her face in. Did I mention she’s doing all of this to obtain the “perfect wedding”? Like, ma’am, calm the fuck down. Fortunately, Erina learns a new skill and we’re going to take this bitch out and undo her brainwashing with extreme capture-the-flag.
Or… replace-the-flag. Whatever.
We make it back to Leblanc with the unbrainwashed Panther and Oracle in tow, and Toshiro is taking things really well! And by taking things really well, I mean complaining about us breaking the laws of physics, admitting that he doesn’t remember much of anything other than his name and being a Diet member, and being disapproving of the Phantom Thieves directly to their faces. Which goes over great!
He still wants us to help him get out, tho. But doesn't want to actually fight, so like... eh. Right now he's a bit of a wet blanket. But I do have my suspicions already, because he kind of almost recognized Erina. So depending on how old she is (since I can't really tell), I'm guessing either daughter or wife. Especially because, completely independently of each other:
That’s where I stopped, so, some final few random thoughts:
You can re-bind some of the control buttons, but you cannot invert the camera controls, so I am constantly spinning the camera the wrong way. Thanks, Atlus.
I find it interesting that the first boss is once again some kind of Lust/Love-obsessed person.
There’s a memo function that keeps track of people, concepts, and locations, and apparently it’s okay to mention Yaldabaoth in the notes, but we cannot acknowledge anything out loud in the actual story. X’D I bet we’re never going to allude to Maruki at all even though this is after Royal.
It’s a little annoying that we’re once again knocked down to initial personas. Like, for Scramble, you could have left the ultimates alone and just made the flimsy excuse that it’s been six months and they forgot all their spells. But they didn’t lose all of their character development, and this time around, it’s just silly. This kid killed a god two months ago. He punched another god three weeks ago. He should not have just Arsene who knows only eiha.
(Eiha inflicts despair now, which would be cool if I knew what despair did in this battle system. At least it makes sense for that to be a side effect of the curse element.)
The game tries to justify it with there being some sort of “force of negation” on both the Velvet Room and the Kingdom as a whole, making it so they aren’t at full strength, but that feels even flimsier an excuse than mine for Scramble. X’D Time to break into Atlus HQ and follow the sage advice of Lavenza’s sister:
…...I just finished Mario Odyssey why are there MORE hats???
Every sprite of Morgana is adorable.
And finally, I can’t stop laughing at VROOM. :D
I like it so far! I’m excited to see where things are going. ^_^
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Today on P5T, we finish the DLC, get cranky at logistics, mentally subtract one from Akira’s assumed god-murder total, and I start gathering up everyone for a roadtrip to go lay on the floor of the Atlus Headquarters until they think about their writing choices.
Before we head off to the finale, we chat a little more about Luca and Guernica, as well as why Goro was investigating the graffiti in the first place. Apparently the police asked for his help to look into it because they were getting frustrated at their own lack of progress. It must suck for them, to not be able to find Guernica or the Phantom Thieves. XD Doesn’t explain how he knew about the Arsène mural in a back alley, tho. People in Yongen seem too chill to call the cops over that sort of thing.
I don’t actually remember what it was that he said, but I was given a dialogue option to agree with him, and when I took it…
Careful, Goro. You almost sound like your real self, there. ^_^
He also makes a comment about how, even if he didn’t want to help Luca, Akira would have made him anyway.
I wanted to be a little shit, but I opted for asking him to show off instead.
Now that the mural is complete, it’s actually really beautiful. The three pieces recombined, and dissolved into light, which was absorbed into Luca. We also learn Guernica’s real name, and Luca prepares to open a hole directly into the villains’ lair.
Meanwhile, in the lair itself, Jerri is still being a huge bitch, and also apparently hates art.
She’s trying her best to delete every memory of Luca from Guernica’s heart, so by the time we get there, things are very dire. The world took the thing Guernica loved most, and now she’s been fully warped into wanting to destroy the whole world as retribution.
We fight Guernica to a standstill, and Luca finally, finally gets through to her. Jerri tries to throw a fit, but Sumi is not letting anyone interrupt this moment between sisters.
Luca returns the light of Guernica’s first mural and restores her to normal, and then fades out, her task accomplished. That just leaves Guernica herself, who is pissed at Jerri.
And Jerri is doing herself no favors in response.
Goro… really shouldn’t know that the gods are real at this point, but he’s excused because it’s pretty badass to just flat-out say it to her face like that. XDDD
Jerri is not a god, Jerri is a minion at best, but she still transforms for one last final boss battle that makes it pretty obvious who her master is.
...I’m losing it a little over the fact that she’s still just named “Jerri”, though.
The paint mechanics shift again, this time introducing black paint that we’re not allowed to walk on at all. The whole battlefield is covered at the start, but as Jerri summons enemies, and Guernica backs us up with her paint gun to create a path, the boss is eventually within reach. After a certain amount of her health is depleted, she resets the battlefield to a new configuration and new black paint, and we go again.
Third battlefield is the charm, and despite Jerri’s claims that she’s in control, Guernica understands now that this is her world, and she’s the one with the power.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe something a little more dramatic, considering the full capabilities of imagination, but this works too! One last rainbow-painted battlefield where no one has any cover at all. Shoutout to Goro and World’s End for chewing through a ton of her hp. And so Jerri falls, and her giant mock-god form dissolves back to the bird.
Jerri vanishes, and dear god, are we really not getting any more than that regarding her identity?
...thanks for confirming, Sumi.
Guernica talks a little more about how she’s can feel Luca in her heart, and that she’ll always be with her. It makes Sumi tear up, but she’s not sure why it’s affecting her so much. How close was she to breaking through Maruki’s bullshit? Man, if we’d just kept this conversation going for a couple more minutes, we might have done it.
Akira gets a dialogue option to tell Guernica that he’s a fan of hers now, and she’s thrilled. Everyone promises to see each other again one day, and Guernica sends them back to the real world.
...she’s so pretty.
I have to wonder if this is a similar situation to Toshiro. Her eyes aren’t shadow-gold, so I’m assuming this is the real deal. In which case, she’s very chill about being in another world. I’m thinking this place is closest to a Stronghold. Something to protect the core of her heart. And Luca was part of that protection, when she couldn’t protect herself.
We get a brief confirmation that Jerri was in fact working for Salmael, and he’s sending her back to the void because no, Jerri, killing all of humanity is not the kind of tranquility he’s going for. We never actually see him or any of his dialogue, but this is definitely his weird clockwork kingdom.
So what you’re telling me, Atlus, is that there were two active gods in Tokyo in November. Plus Azathoth already actively screwing with Maruki’s head. PLUS Enlil’s cinema and all that nonsense that the Thieves don’t remember. November was an absolute fucking mess. It’s a wonder the whole city didn’t just poof out of existence from the strain.
My actual point here is that I’m trying to wrap my brain around how Salmael and Yaldabaoth are going to coexist ruling over humanity. I guess absolute control can mesh with self-preservation instincts, but it’s funnier to imagine God Wars. XD
Anyway, I wonder how long we’ve been gone this ti–
I want you all to understand that I blurted “NO” out loud.
This is CHEATING, Atlus, you damn cowards, you set this story in November and refuse to commit to the consequences of that. I loved this DLC, I loved the story and the music and the character interactions, but this last two minutes was just… complete disappointment. At least the games that involve the Abyss of Time are justified in no one remembering anything.
The graffiti Goro came to investigate is gone, so he decides to just leave. You came all the way here to Yongen and aren’t going to stick around for longer than two minutes (from your perspective)?
And what time is it? It was afternoon before, as far as I could tell, but Guernica’s done a whole new piece, and the news claims it appeared “overnight”. Is this a weird memory retcon thing on a massive scale, or have we been gone all night and just don’t notice that we’re missing like 12 hours? Morgana’s watching the news report when Akira gets back to Leblanc, but he doesn’t comment on Akira being gone, just implies that they’re running late need to leave, before Sojiro gets upset. So like… late for school? Is it the next morning???? Atlus I’m begging for just a crumb of a sense of time anywhere in this game.
It’s cool art, though. :)
The credits are cool, with little floating paint blobs, and afterwards, we get a brief scene of Toshiro watching the news. His father notes that he seems too interested in the graffiti, and he brushes it off as ‘petty vandalism’… before immediately going back to watching the news intently.
And that is the ending of the DLC! Now I can go get those last few personas for my compendium, and run NG+ merciless mode–
……….are you KIDDING ME, ATLUS.
Fine. Time to call down World’s End to just murder everything. Goro’s gonna be my strongest teammate forever.
It also unlocked challenge maps, with specific character and skill presets for each one. I tried the first one, and not only is it difficult, but all of a sudden, friendly fire is active for AOE spells, so that is bizarre. We’ll see if I can figure those out another day.
For now, time to go not think about how I’d change that ending. :P
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Today on P5T, we continue to color our world, we fail to drag Goro into our natural habitat, we encounter a Plot Twist, and we learn that not only is the villain’s plan awful, it’s in service of someone else!
Guernica has… problems. Which was pretty obvious, but it’s always nice to have it confirmed from a primary source. Jerri is encouraging her destructive impulses, which are driving her to kill parts of her own heart.
I forgot to mention that this bird sounds like the worst kind of overbearing, stuffy school headmistress or something. Bad vibes all around. She encourages Guernica to hunt down Luca and the Thieves and kill them for “inspiration”.
So when we set off to get the second piece of the broken artwork, she catches up and ambushes us. It’s all good until we beat her and she immediately gets up and starts to come at us again.
She’s actually really intimidating like this. 100% feral and out for blood. X’D
We run for it, find the second artwork, get caught again, and get slammed with a major piece of new information.
(Also, I’d like to point out that Guernica also has a mouse tail.)
This revelation/reminder is enough to drive Guernica off. She insists that she doesn’t have a sister and she doesn’t know what Luca is talking about, and leaves to deal with the splitting migraine it’s given her. Back in her secret base, wherever that is, she’s still in pain, and Jerri starts gaslighting her.
Whatever Jerri is, it’s something very bad. She’s using Guernica’s rage and hate for her own purposes.
Back at the hideout, Goro insists that Luca tells them the truth about her connection to Guernica. So Luca explains – not in the specific terms – that she’s a cognition of Guernica’s older sister.
The two of them were abandoned by their parents and grew up on the streets, constantly hungry and cold. But they were happiest when they were doing art together. They started painting after being inspired by some graffiti they saw, and worked on a mural together. But eventually, at some point, Luca died.
They were abandoned not just by their parents, but by society as a whole. No one tried to help them, so it’s no wonder that Guernica has such anger at the institutions that failed them. And the first piece of art she ever did, the mural that she painted with her older sister, is the core of her heart that we’ve been trying to repair all this time.
Man, I brought the right party members for this. Talk about the two people I know who can relate to this story the most. I mean if you think about it–
……Goro. Goro. I know we’re in the middle of Sae’s Palace in reality, but honestly. I know your tragic backstory. Come on.
…this sounds like… Sumire, more than Kasumi. Like she’s shining through for a brief moment here. She never specifically says that it was her older or younger sister, so it’s hard to say which twin she is right now.
This would be great if it was taking place in January. Not only could we have snarky Black Mask, we could dig a little more into how Sumire felt when Kasumi died. She talks here about how terrible it was that her twin died in an accident before they could repair their bond and talk like they used to, but I dunno, it would feel more sincere if it was the real her.
Plus it’s fucking hilarious to imagine Maruki freaking out because the three of them just vanished into who-knows-where.
We discuss some more about our current situation and what Jerri might be, and… Goro, please.
We know Morgana. We fight monsters in another world. I’m begging you to keep up. X’D
Back at Guernica’s secret hideout, she’s having a crisis. She’s insisting that she doesn’t have a sister, that she doesn’t know what’s going on. Jerri tells her that she’ll just have to kill all those “brats”, so she can achieve her goal. They’re so close, but they’re not there yet!
Well, that sounds bad. Not sure that killing everyone with rebellious tendencies is the best plan, but I guess when you’re a birdbrain--
YOUR WHAT?
Okay, who the fuck is this bird working for?
Theories:
It’s not Yald. Yald would not give a shit about how many people die. He just wants control. So the bird would not be worried about what he thinks of Guernica potentially killing people.
Salmael doesn’t want conflict and specifically doesn’t like that the Thieves are rebels. He’s not against violence because he tried to kill you during the boss fight, but I can’t imagine he wants vast amounts of dead people. However, Salmael being active in November poses some major questions about whether or not he’d be stepping on Yald’s toes in terms of ruling humanity.
Azathoth probably does not give a shit about who dies, but Maruki would. He wants happiness for everyone, not mass death. Maruki is not active in November, but Azathoth could potentially be trying to get humanity to shut up before he decides to fully commit to using Maruki instead. I dunno. This is a sequel, Atlus, use your shit.
Anyway, back at the hideout, we get an optional conversation about some more of Luca and Guernica’s backstory. They slept where they could, sold recyclable junk for money, and ate food from restaurant trash cans. They perfected the art of finding the most useful things in a pile of trash. Sumi, bless her, expresses interest in learning more about how to search for things like that, and… well… Luca wants Akira and Goro to join in too.
We bully Goro with love in this house.
Sumi says she still wants to try, and Luca encourages Goro to change his mind!
Goro, you’re gonna have to join me in Trash Land one day, either literally or metaphorically. XDDDD
I guess it’s okay if he’s contemplating picking up his old hobby.
……wait. WAIT. Q2 ALSO takes place in November. What if it takes place after this and this is the thing that got Goro to start doing graffiti art???
ANYWAY.
We’re off to find the third and final piece of the broken artwork, but there’s something strange about this area. A weird smell, according to Sumi and Luca.
...oh.
The fun part about having Luca around is that she takes all of Goro’s passive-aggressive barbs at face value and throws him off-kilter. We agree to go try to figure out the source of the smell and save anyone who needs saving, and when Goro agrees to come, Luca is surprised.
“Oh, you’re coming to help?”
“Not what you expected from a ‘cold-hearted bastard’, hm?”
And instead of whatever apology he might have been angling for, Luca is just like, “yeah, I didn’t expect that. Cool!” and runs off, leaving a very wrong-footed Goro.
And then we experience Mood Whiplash From Hell.
Well… I guess we know what the source of the smell is.
Jerri shows up and tells the Thieves the basic outline of her plan to use Guernica’s art to drive people into a murderous rage in the real world. Humanity will destroy their own corrupted society! It’ll be great! And…
………..horrible to think about, and somehow even worse coming from this pink bird.
Guernica is also there, and they appeal to her to stop all of this. But she insists that nothing matters but her goal. Even if Luca is her sister, it doesn’t matter. She’ll kill her if she gets in her way.
And Sumi does not take that well.
We get away from Guernica again, heading for the final piece of the broken artwork, and end up having to fight the two massive shadows that had been guarding the previous pieces at the same time. I got womped three different times before I finally managed to beat them, and that was where I stopped, because wow, that was tricky.
So to finish up, some observations.
Despite only being level 25, the personas it’s giving me are reaching the 70s. That last fight gave me Moloch and Oberon. If this DLC just hands me Satan I’m gonna be weirded out. But also, I’m interested whether I can only have 30 different personas, because…
Interesting choice, Atlus. Some of this feels very like… I mean, obviously it’s DLC, it’s gonna recycle stuff, but they didn’t like, redo the menus to account for different mechanics. If I can’t discard personas, why is the button still there? The memo function has so many slots, I can only assume it’s the entries from the main game. Why are they here? It’s not like I can fill them in. The DLC is completely separate from the main game. Hell, it has it’s own save menu. It just feels odd.
They also never try to give Sumi a code name. No one even brings it up.
Everyone’s final skills are already unlocked, so you just need enough points. Akira’s scythes are still here, and Sumi’s attack is basically the animation for Divine Judgment with a different name.
Makes sense that it’s a few points stronger than Akira’s. Bless magic is consistently a little stronger than curse. That’s consistent across the other spells, and is most obvious on Goro because he has both.
But Goro also has almighty, and his final skill is an absolutely massive almighty spell called World’s End that is significantly stronger than the other two’s skills. Robin Hood shoots a shining arrow into space and calls down a massive space laser to kill everything. It’s incredible.
And on that note, my next objective is “infiltrate Guernica’s base”, so I guess we’re going to head to that white museum-looking place.
No shadows to hide in, there. Time to figure out what’s really going on here.
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Last night on P5T: We start the DLC at last, jet-set into a twister of nonsense, find mice instead of squids, and I freak out a bit over Satanael~
If you want to skip me ranting about the Velvet Room, scroll down to the big bold text. XD
Look at him. He’s beautiful. And he knows megidolaon!
But my Quest for Satanael, I feel, has exposed another flaw in this game. It’s not a problem if you’re just playing straight through, but if you’re my dumb ass and you want to finish the compendium/obtain Satanael/forge the best weapons, it starts to become an issue.
Fusion is expensive if you’re pulling things out of the compendium. You need personas of specific levels to fuse the weapons, and obviously the best weapons are very high level personas, which won’t drop during battle. Special fusions like Lucifer, Chi You, and Satanael have five or six components each. The cost can be mitigated some by using personas obtained during fights, but in that case, you lose skill options if you’re trying to pass on a specific one via fusion chain. (I can’t imagine trying to get a specific skill on a high-level persona in this game. Ugh. At least megidolaon was a base skill on one of Satanael’s ingredients.)
Which brings us to the actual issue: there’s… no good way to get money in this game.
Money is purely obtained from winning battles. There are no bits and bobs to sell, no money from releasing unneeded personas, nothing. Which means that if you are trying to raise enough money to pay for your multitude of weapons and high-level persons, you are going to be replaying prior battles.
A Lot.
The battles in the final kingdom give around 10K yen, from what I can tell. That can be boosted to around 18K if all three party members have a sub-persona with the “Easy Money” skill. In comparison, personas like Michael and Lucifer (components of Satanael), cost somewhere in the 20-25K range to call from the compendium. You need Michael to make Lucifer in the first place, so you’re going to have to summon him from the compendium at least once.
I don’t know if I did something wrong or inefficiently or what, but I spent the whole game feeling like I barely had enough money for the things I wanted. New weapons often broke the bank, and I wasn’t always using Easy Money because I wanted to actually take specific skills or personas into battle. By the time I was trying to get Satanael, I was basically grinding the same mission multiple times in a row because I knew I could finish it in the least number of turns. It's a little disheartening after unlocking all the endgame bonuses and tricks in Royal and racking up hundreds of thousands of yen in one go to spend on fusion.
That’s not even counting the fusion accidents. The first time I went to fuse Satan (also a component of Satanael), the forge exploded. That probably should have been my cue to start save-scumming, but I didn’t. I assumed that special fusions were immune to fusion accidents. They are not. I placed all of Satanael’s components in the forge and it exploded, wasting least 30K yen.
In hindsight, I probably could have loaded the autosave. But I honestly forgot that the autosave was happening. I always saved manually when I stopped and didn’t worry about anything else. But that’s not the point.
The point is that Satanael should not have been able to explode. X’D
(Side note: fusing Lucifer got a special animation. It’s the only one so far. Why just him???)
But yeah. My compendium still isn’t done, and I’m not even close to the best weapons. I kind of want to take them into merciless mode for NG+, so that means going back and grinding more. But not right now. Right now, we’re off to Spray Paint Land.
It’s time for DLC!
We begin this chilly November late afternoon/evening/whatever with more Quality Morgana Faces.
It has to be November, because Goro’s on the team at this point. Plain and simple. There’s literally only like a 3-week period this can take place in. Akira receives a text from Sumi that says she wants him to meet her in a nearby alley. I guess she was on her way to the cafe. But Morgana says that he knows when to mind his own business, and to call if Akira needs anything.
Call what phone, Mona? Are you gonna answer the cafe phone? Just admit you wanna nap.
Wait. Wait. Morgana. Wake up. The plot is happening. Wake up!
Well, I suppose that means Goro isn’t the artist. He wouldn't have had time while all the Okumura stuff was happening. All these sad mice, tho. Very strange. And isn’t Guernica the artist from Ib? I went on a classic RPGMaker horror kick a few weeks back. I’d watched Angels of Death a while ago and really liked it, and so I watched playthroughs of Ib and Mad Father for the first time. Ib was good, Mad Father was… mediocre, I think.
...oh. That’s Guertena. Neeeeeeevermind.
So, Sumi wants to show you a mural of Arsène being eaten by a giant rat. Which is… not what I was expecting the mural of Akira’s persona to look like. As they puzzle over how the hell a picture of Arsène ended up in a random alley in Yongen, Goro also shows up, ready to investigate.
…...I swear to god, Atlus, why is he the only one who you won’t call by his first name? Also, how is he here to investigate? How did he know about a random mural in the backstreets when everyone is busy paying attention to the giant one on the security building?
He asks if Sumi and Akira had anything to do with this mural, then laughs at Sumi when she gets all flustered by the question. They speculate on the artist’s motives for a bit, since Guernica’s identity is unknown, and then Akira hears a voice calling for the Phantom Thieves from inside the wall.
This made me laugh very hard for inside joke reasons, but Goro assures Sumi that there is no way that there is a person trapped in that wall.
But the mural starts to glow, Arsène disappears, and everything and all of us start getting sucked into the rat’s mouth. And I love and appreciate Sumi dearly, but… none of us are safe here, and you have had your persona for like a month. I should be protecting you.
Joker arrives in a spray-paint covered cityscape, and I already love this place. Holy shit the colors. We’re immediately thrown into a battle, and shooting the little dudes throws paint all over the ground around them. Hehehe. It’s like we’re in Splatoon or something.
...oh. I was joking. But we ARE in Splatoon!
When you’re standing on the enemy’s color, you can’t do anything. No attacks or skills. So there’s definitely an element of strategizing here. I really like it, even if I did die on my first attempt because I was figuring out how it all worked.
……Lavenza, I appreciate the classic literature, but you’re scaring me just a little. XDDDD
Anyway, Joker gets surrounded, the other two jump in to save him, and we get a minor pointing Spiderman meme of “wait, you have powers?” It’s also a little silly because Sumi’s idle stance is a constant pose. Your arms are gonna hurt.
Sumi clarifies to Goro what happened in the Palace when she awakened, and he’s just glad she can fight, even if she’s not formally a Phantom Thief. He clarifies that he is only sort of kind of a Phantom Thief for reasons that would take too long to go into.
...my dear, that is every situation involving these two.
But no, this is completely unrealistic. Goro would have at least a question or two about a random Palace that just spawned somewhere. If this game doesn’t imply that he asked something before January…….
They hear screaming, and a have their first encounter with a non-hostile denizen of this world, who collapses in Sumi’s arms, begs for help, and explodes into paint, leaving Sumi concerned and traumatized. X’D
Goro reminds her that these are cognitions, not even bothering to hide how confident he is in his knowledge about the metaverse, and the trio follows the continuing screams to a mouse massacre.
A crazed woman with a parrot is just gunning down vast amounts of cute mouse people. Paint is going everywhere. It’s insane. Even Goro is put off by the sight.
Meanwhile, Sumi refuses to stand for this and just goes right up to confront the problem.
The bird’s name is Jerri, and I had to message Po in the middle of this, because I was having a crisis.
I can’t unsee it. Help.
Anyway, this is Guernica, and she wants to paint the walls with our blood!
Fortunately, everyone is rescued by a mysterious hole opening up under us, and we meet our savior.
Well… one of us is.
This is Luca, and she’s so happy to see us, because she wants us to help Guernica. Apparently, she was different before Jerri showed up. She felt a kinship with the Phantom Thieves and their quest against corruption. Now, she has strange powers to "peer into people's hearts", and her art can… basically cause a variation of a psychotic breakdown.
Apparently her mental state is fucked because someone stole her Treasure (the first piece of art she ever made) and broke it into pieces. The memo section says, "She was driven to carnage by the theft of her heart's core, prompting her to go on killing sprees in the Metaverse." Which has some WILD implications that I doubt the game is gonna touch on. X’’’’D
Luka also takes us to see this world’s version of the Arsène mural, which is… gruesome? Like, there’s bones sticking out.
Apparently this art was Guernica’s last cry for help before she snapped completely. And she knows what Akira’s persona looked like because of that power to “peek into people’s hearts”. It’s a bit wobbly, but we’ll go with that for now.
Guernica’s “first statement” is in three pieces, so we’re off to retrieve the first one. And I love Luca already.
Jerri wants us to hand over Luca. I might have considered it if she didn’t call me a mop. She claims she’ll send us right home, but that sounds like bullshit.
Also, shoutout to Goro for using his “real” voice here. Time to get dangerous~
It’s nice to hear, because I actually find myself missing abrasive, snarky third-sem Goro compared to the Detective Prince.
This whole thing is such a wild vibe of Splatoon, TWEWY, and Jet Set Radio. The music is fun, the aesthetics are top-notch, and so far the levels have had that extra level of challenge of working with the paint mechanics. It’s really great.
Luka’s ability is creating “manholes” to warp from place to place, and Goro is quickly getting tired of having to jump down them. XD
Our hideout is basically down in the sewers. Luca fished new weapons out of the trash for us, and there’s no Velvet Room, so I guess we’re stuck with whatever sub-personas drop during the battle stages.
We get to have a fun conversation about bouldering, and I caught Goro blinking in the picture, but he actually looks genuinely surprised that you’d want to come try his hobby.
I love the mental image of the three of them going rock-climbing together.
And then, tragically, the Switch ran out of battery. But I’m loving it so far! This is a fun side-story, even if I am a little skeptical of how they’re going to justify everything when they get back to the real world. I’d need to go watch the beginning of January again, but I’d swear there was explicit dialogue that neither of them knew the other had powers beforehand.
Oh well. A thought for another day. Right now, we wonder what kind of disguised god named itself “Jerri”. XDDD
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P5T Story Finale - Part 2
I'm typing this up while sleepy to post in the morning, but here is the rest!
Where last we left our beloved idiots, they were running for their lives back to the train from the collapsing Palace. Lavenza attempts to do the whole "please keep your hands and arms inside the ride" speech, but Morgana cuts her off and begs her to just go.
It's kind of cute how disappointed she is that she doesn't get to say it. But we're going!
[insert the sound of the Thieves screaming here]
The train is able to take us back over all the previous Kingdoms to get back to Erina's, and we get to see how happy everyone is that all of this is finally over. Also I just love how the flying train looks. <3 I wish it could stay like this. I'm sure there's a way to connect that to the other rooms. XDDD
Once we land, Lavenza informs everyone that the rest of the Kingdoms will disappear soon, and that we should "use our time wisely". I'll give the kids credit: they figured out really fast that it meant Erina was going to disappear too. Even if she was still going to 'exist' in Toshiro's heart, they were sad that they couldn't bring her to the real world with them.
I dunno, Toshiro, if the others were never gonna see Arsene or Captain Kidd or Robin Hood again, I think they'd be sad, too. You're fine. Everyone else is crying, too.
I really think everyone got a crying sprite, actually.
Erina gets to say something nice to each of the Thieves, and that she was glad to be friends with them. And she promises Akira and Morgana that she'll find a way to see them again one day.
It's sweet, even if it probably won't happen. :(
Toshiro promises that he won't forget anything that's happened here, and he won't waver in his convictions ever again. I'm surprisingly proud of him. He started this game as an absolute soggy paper bag of a man, and now he's gained nerves of steel.
Maybe nerves of like... copper. He's still got a ways to go. But he's come so far.
After everything fades out, the Thieves find themselves back in Leblanc. There is no indication of how much time passed while they were gone. They mentioned resting multiple times, so within meta-space, the equivalent of days were passing, but there's no clue how it correlates to the real world. Toshiro was in there long enough that there was a news report about him being missing, but like, Sojiro's not kicking the door in freaking out about where his kids have been, so... I don't even know.
(Sojiro is not in this game at all, which is sad. :( )
The Thieves are worried whether Toshiro made it back safely, and Ann makes a brilliant suggestion.
Fortunately, everyone shoots that down with the reminder that Public Security is watching them, so they are forced to just wait and see what happens for now.
Morgana makes the most adorably intense face.
Toshiro, meanwhile, has either reappeared at the Diet, or went to the Diet immediately after reappearing. And Marie and Yoshiki don't seem to have any clue where he was.
So I guess they didn't throw him in. Which means it really all was just Salmael trying to break him.
Imagine being just a guy, trying to exist, and a god decided to specifically try to break your brain. What the heck. X'D
Yoshiki and Marie immediately remind us that they are horrible fucking people even when they're not Salmael's cognitive puppets.
Toshiro just agrees with everything they say.
And then as soon as they leave, he rips up the script.
We love a man who's been through character development. XD
Timeskip an undetermined amount of time forward.
Futaba mentions it's "warmer" today, so maybe we're into early March? Everyone is still in school. Can we at least get a single flicker of what date it is?? Please? Scramble had a calendar; I'm dying over here. XDDD
Anyway, Toshiro held a press conference and went rogue, indicted his father for all of his crimes, resigned his position on the Diet, and broke off his engagement, all in one go. I kind of wish we'd gotten that scene properly, because it would have been a WILD ride. At least the picture is great. XD
That is sad, though, because I think he'd be a fantastic prime minister now. And one with a semi-direct line to the Phantom Thieves of Hearts!
He calls the Leblanc phone to get in touch with them and let them know he's okay, which is both sweet and hilarious.
He says he's still dealing with hearings and court stuff surrounding his father and Marie, and that he's being looked down on as part of it all, too. But he also says he's going to start his career from scratch, and work his way back up on his own merits. Which is a noble goal. Maybe him and Yoshida can meet and hang out. They've got a lot in common, and Toshiro can use a mentor who isn't a piece of shit.
But Toshiro's okay for now, and that's the important part. He makes the Thieves a promise to never give up on his ideals, and it's really nice.
And with a bit more philosophizing about human nature and hearts and whatnot, we have hit the credits!
Post-credits, we get a lot of online chatter about how Toshiro has been seen out in public basically every day. Hanging out in Station Square, talking to people, helping out with things, basically doing everything he can to rebuild his reputation.
And someone is watching him.
She walks with a cane now, but she's here, and I'm so happy they were reunited. I want them to be so happy together.
And that is the actual end! The final boss was really cool, and I thought the ending was great. Obviously I'm sad to see Erina go, but it made sense. I am curious why they changed her name in English. Watching the kids ponder over whether "Eri" and "Erina" were related in some way was... a little exasperating. I don't know if leaving her name as Elle would have made it less of a glaring neon signpost, or if "Elle" in Japanese was an equally-obvious reading in some way.
I'm a little annoyed that we never really found out how the Thieves got into the metaverse? Like, if we assume Salmael yoinked Toshiro, did he also yoink the Thieves? Was it an accident because of all the duplicates of Leblanc? Give me something, game.
I wish they'd done more with the fact that it's a sequel. Namedrop Sumi and Maruki, at least, because as it stands, it's just little things. The grappling hook. Lavenza. It's no fun to have all this potential stuff and not use it. Although it is funny, because I still don't think anything in Scramble contradicts any of this, so it would still work as a Royal-timeline sequel. Which means these kids will have killed five gods in five months. And that's assuming there's no god at the end of the DLC. XDDDDDDD
The mechanics were fun, and different from what I was expecting. A little repetitive at times, but not in a way that I found annoying. The real annoyance is trying to get enough money for all the persona-summoning to fill the compendium. XDDDDD
Also, I ran into... I guess a weird glitch? Right at the end, after I saved my clear data. I saved two slots before I left for the final fight against Salmael, so I'd have one to go back to to grind for personas before I do NG+. Those files were at about 36-37 hours. Salmael and the ending took me about 2 hours.
The game seems to think those two hours were 120, so apparently I fell into the hyperbolic time cube when I wasn't looking???
I didn't touch anything in slot 2 after I left for the final battle, but even THAT time changed. I don't get it. I haven't spent 157 hours without going to NG+, I swear. X'D
(NG+, which will apparently save my money, compendium, notes, gallery, and weapons. But not my level, so I STILL have to be level 96 to fuse Satanael. Damn it, Atlus. Also apparently you can fuse the other protag and protag-adjacent personas on NG+? So, Orpheus, Izanagi and Izanagi-no-Okami, Athena, Tsukiyomi, Ariadne, Thanatos, and Messiah. Which sounds awesome but also aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa more fusion. XDDDD)
Last but not least, I went back to check out the other option when Salmael asks for your answer.
It does nothing. The scene proceeds the same no matter which you pick. I was kind of expecting a bad ending, so that's a little disappointing.
Overall, I really enjoyed Tactica, and now I can't wait to play the DLC and figure out how Atlus has shoehorned this scenario into November instead of just committing to a sequel. X'D These kids had the busiest November of anyone ever, apparently.
See you for spray paint!
#Li plays P5T#one day I'll make a persona final boss tier list#to go with the Persona Parents tier list that I also need to make XD
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P5T Story Finale - Part 1
I'm just starting off with the assumption that this will have to be 2 parts, to fit all the pictures I took. XD
So, where we left off, I was doing pretty good.
We'd beaten Metal Marie, and Lavenza had some challenges for us to unlock our final skills. I was kind of hyped, because honestly, it seemed like a good opportunity to get everyone's ultimate personas back. And then Erina could just have whatever.
It was not second awakenings, despite the way they talked about it sounding very second-awakening-ish. Instead, we get a maximum power skill for each Thief's specific element. And, sorry everyone, but Joker's is the coolest.
I also think that it's worth mentioning that when you die, Lavenza quotes Paradise Lost at you.
She also quotes it at the very start of the game, so she's very well-read. Probably Margaret and Theodore's influence; I can't see Elizabeth sitting through a book like that. XDDD
Anyway, Lavenza's challenges were some very elaborate puzzle levels and endurance missions with gimmicks, but nothing that was completely unreasonable. The one where you had to kill everything in one turn by using one-mores and platforms to get Joker to the top of the level to trigger the widest-possible AOA range was awesome. I felt smart when I finished them, which was the important part.
And my reward, other than skills, was......
You have to be level 96 to fuse Satanael, tho, so like... holy fuck, Atlus. Booooooo. And he's got like seven components, which I'm pretty sure he did in P5, but you couldn't fuse him til NG+, so you at least would have had most of them by then. This is just taunting me. Plus, it's not nearly as easy to get money in this. You have to replay missions, and later missions give more money but also take longer, so it seems like it'll be a little tedious to complete the compendium.
ANYWAY.
Metal Yoshiki and Metal Shadow Toshiro went down next, and I'm pretty sure it confirmed that it wasn't actually Toshiro's shadow, just a piece of Salmael masquerading as it. I wasn't... super impressed with these fights? They were basically the same as the first go round, just with more health, more damage, and slightly different arenas. Metal Shadow Toshiro skipped his first round and went right to Giant Scary Eri, so... Yeah. They were fine, I guess.
I did notice something a little funny, though. The final Kingdom is "The Path to God" in the replay menu, and there are six missions (not counting the bosses), each with a letter appended to them.
All six in order spells "A S Y L U M".
If Salmael rules this Kingdom, is he the crazy one, then? :P
So, we are off to the final boss. My goblin kids are ready to beat the shit out of their third god in like... four months? Wow.
Slap him so hard he drops his head, Futaba!
I finally realized what this thing's appearance reminds me of. Some weird fusion of Yald, and the Queen from Deltarune.
He has the SMUGGEST VOICE of any god so far and it just makes me want to hit him harder. Maybe I should have done some grinding for Satanael after all.
He just wants to ~save humanity~, and I'd just like to mention how much I love my wife.
Salmael is totally cool with our disagreement, obviously.
Us? All by ourselves? You think so highly of us~
Salmael says that his actions are the consensus of humanity, so we should just give in. The game gives you an option here between "Our wills are firm" and "Send us back to the real world." Which, if you remember, he offered to send us all home without our powers or memories, so... put a pin in that. We'll be back. In THIS timeline, we tell God to fuck off, as is our wont.
I feel justified in writing Ryuji calling Yaldabaoth "Yald" in an actual fic, now. XD
Seriously, Atlus, one line of dialogue. "We've already beat up a 'god' who thought he knew what was best for us." Call Maruki on his BS.
Anyway, as always, these gods who want peace and happiness and order are willing to murder us. Ooohhhh nooo, I don't waaaaant to use force, you just leave me no chooooooiiiiiice~ Blarg. XD
The battlefield is wild, though. I'm always down for a good giant clock.
The five platforms rotate either forward or back based on a skill that warns you in advance. Platforms that go past the end positions sink into the green, and more arise on the other side to replace them.
So, we wallop the shit out of god while avoiding being tossed into a green abyss. I only lost Toshiro during this stage of the fight, so I still had my three primary fighters and three baton passes.
Salmael, upon being knocked down in round 1, throws a temper tantrum, and... well, I guess calling it "going one-winged-angel" isn't appropriate here. He's still got all his wings, just gets more raggedy and dirty.
But the important part is that he loses the mask and his face is FUCKED UP
He gets two new attacks for this round. The first one is a very Dark Hour-esque clock which leaves numbers on some of the platforms. That's how many people need to be standing on that particular platform to avoid triggering an attack that paralyzes you on your next turn.
Overall, challenging! Especially because the numbers don't rotate with the platforms, so if he does both skills at the same time, you've gotta make sure you're not gonna rotate away from the number you need. (Learned that the hard way.)
The second one is some kind of giant antenna that spawns in the middle of the arena, and you have like... three turns to AOA it before he does some horrible targeted missile barrage. I had the worst time with that. That's how I lost all three of my remaining squad in one turn, because I couldn't get the downed enemy to line up right to allow the AOA.
So we're down Ann, Morgana, and Akira. Welcome to the fight, Haru, Yusuke, and Ryuji!
Salmael's second form has about twice as much health as his first form, which can be mitigated by AOA-ing the antenna, because Futaba can then turn the missiles on him. I only managed that once. X'D But the game REALLY smacked me when it did the clock attack and the arena rotation on the same turn, and the clock was four platforms, each with a 1 on it. I didn't have Toshiro anymore. I couldn't put one person on each platform. So everyone got paralyzed, and the rotation was poised to dump both Haru and Yusuke into the abyss with no way to move them.
It was going to be up to Ryuji to win this fight alone.
...or, it would have been, but as I watched Yusuke sink into the green depths, I realized that... the platform just popped back up on the other side. Yusuke was fine. Didn't even do any damage. X'D I spent the whole fight thinking that if I got sucked down with a platform, that person would just die. But no.
In the end, Haru dealt the final blow, and Salmael took that really well. He just straight up starts taking a swing at us and throwing gears. So I guess we DID slap him so hard he dropped his head!
My baby boy gets to say more than one line of dialogue in this game!
This is the smile of a savior, everyone.
Honestly this last AOA cutscene is wild. I like it better than Scramble's, I think? I need to watch it again, but it's really well done. Halfway through, Erina gets squashed by a whole ton of gears and ends up... I'm assuming drifting in the Sea of Souls, and Toshiro calls her back so she can take her Ernesto form and blast the hell out of Salmael. And then she turns back into Erina and she and Akira slam a flag through Salmael's face. :3
Yeah, yeah. Same as every other monster.
Salmael takes defeat well, of course. By exploding.
And Toshiro catches a brief glimpse of the overwhelming existential dread that knowing about meta-space can cause: namely that humanity is constantly accidentally almost destroying itself.
I like to think that he gets a phone call from the Shadow Ops at some point. XDDDD
Anyway, with Salmael dead, his primary Kingdom is collapsing, so it's time to get the hell out of here. And with this, I have hit the image limit, so... Off we go. Part 2 is next!
#Li plays P5T#Me@the boss: you're not even the coolest of the four gods we've killed across two different timelines
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I have finished the main story of Tactica! Finally. After working on Christmas stuff for like a week.
Writeup to come, but I was happy with it. ^_^
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