Memento Mori. Let's Play Persona 3!
Part 34 is out! Summer begins proper, with a festival event to herald in the sudden free time we have, naturally completely eating up the entire day for no reason! That said, you get to spend some quality time with any female classmate you've initiated a social link with, or you can opt to help Aigis acclimate to her surroundings. Following that, the Port Island Station Film Festival begins, with a new movie marathon every day. This is purely opt in, with a different person calling you up/texting you to go the movies most every day until it ends. We won't be seeing it until the next video in Reload, but we end up going on quite few movie dates in FES and Portable as it is beneficial for some of our school social links. Past that, Koromaru gets a ton of focus in this video, as he should.
Extra Notes
In FES
-We get our introduction to going on walks with Koromaru in this video! This was a new night event added in FES and retained for all future versions of the game (though some of the walk scenes have been replaced or shuffled around for the FemC) that mostly serves to add some additional interactions with your team once you've completed all things you could possibly do at night. Occasionally, you can also walk Koromaru by yourself to get an item, and on certain nights you'll run into Social Link characters on your walk, getting a +10 (with the potential for matching Persona bonus) points to their Social Link progress. This can occasionally be used as a means to push characters towards a rank up, though it's basically impossible to plan around without a guide. You only occasionally meet people on walks, and it'll always be a specific character on a specific night. Nothing in game tells you indirectly that Koromaru can be walked on a given night, you just need to interact with him and see if he wants to go outside.
-I'm not actually sure if any of the festival dates award social link points, though it hardly matters because the only girl who'd benefit from it right now is Fuuka, and we have a movie date we can do with her later in the month anyway.
-Speaking of, attending a film festival date awards the same amount of social link points as a non-ranked hang out, affected by having a matching Persona (+ maxed out Charm in Portable) like any other social link boost. Movie dates also give a +4 boost to specific social stats, though obviously the only ones we'd care about are Academics at this point, and even that's very low priority. Of the available film dates we can go on, I need to do the ones with Kenji, Kaz and Fuuka to ensure they get a rank up next time we hang out with them. Of those 3, Kaz also needs the matching Persona bonus. Another date I need to attend is Yuko's, not because she needs it for the rank up but because the next time we hang out with her will be in October in-game. The last time we did anything with her was July, so that will be well past the 60 day limit for female social links reversing. Any other movie date can be skipped, and will be skipped after I show off anything interesting regarding it. Note that I attended Keisuke's movie date in the video because I wasn't 100% sure if it was necessary or not, but I did go back and reviewed my raw footage from the last time we hung out with Keisuke, and it is indeed skippable. I may go back and do so in the interest of getting Mamoru to Rank 3 since that actually has some pretty huge benefits in the near future, though it isn't super critical I get that squared away asap.
-I do some weapon fusion to shore up my combat options. I create a Strength arcana weapon, which conveys the Auto-Tarukaja ability. This is a decent thing to have for the protag since this allows me to have boosted attack and accuracy at all times if I pair it with a Speed Enhancer. I do have a specific weapon in mind to create before this Moon cycle is out that the protag will be using for boss fights, but for general exploration Strength weapons help out quite a bit until we make the ultimate elemental specialists who simply don't need the boost. I also can now fuse an Empress Persona, which can create a weapon that conveys the Resist Wind ability. A natural fit for Junpei, anytime you're going up against anything that uses Wind magic, you'll want him to have that.
-On a related note, we can create a Sun Persona at this point, which would allow us to make a weapon to cover Mitsuru's fire weakness. Akihiko has to wait a little, because the first Star Persona we can fuse, Nandi, is level 39. This is one edge Akihiko has in Portable, where much lower leveled Star Personae are available. Not that it matters, since I won't be using him there at all. As for any other notable weapons to create, keep an eye out for the strongest Moon Personae you can fuse, as Crit Up weapons are a very solid option for when they don't have to cover their weakness.
In Portable
-Koromaru has a social link now, occupying the Strength arcana for the FemC. Koromaru's social link is one of 3 new night time social links introduced in the FemC's storyline, and it develops by far the slowest. Don't be in a hurry to get this one maxed out though, as we have plenty of time for it.
-The Summer Festival now has you heading out with the guys of the game, though it otherwise proceeds the same way as other versions of the game.
-I made a goof trading my opals for a Growth 2! If I had sat on them, I would have gotten enough from the special Monday Commodities sale to get a Growth 3. Here's to the could-have-been's!
-As far as movie dates go, we need to go on the ones for Yukari, Akihiko and Rio. Any other can be skipped, though the FemC has so little to do during the day at this point that there really isn't anything I could get super ahead on if I did skip them. Since the FemC has less daytime school links than the MC, she also picks up some exclusive film dates with non-social link characters, such as Theodore/Elizabeth and Ikutski.
-I'm not in a super big hurry to do any weapon fusion right now in Portable, though I will probably fuse off Eligor to create a Tower weapon to cover either Aigis' or Yukari's weakness. Probably Yukari since she's the more vulnerable of the two. I do need to put Growth 2 on him before I fuse him off though, and I'm waiting on a free day where I can grab that from the shrine since I'm currently having it duped. The film festival pretty heavily delays that, annoyingly enough.
In Reload
-In addition to walkies, Koromaru has the unique Brushing hang out that awards us with an item as well as a dapper dog whenever we participate in it. After 3 brushings, he'll gain his characteristic. We can also watch DVDs with him on certain nights, which sounds pretty funny just saying it out loud. We're probably not going to see too many walk events in Reload, as the nights are much busier here and the situational social link bonuses they give are less relevant for a variety of reasons. This is the benefit of playing this alongside FES, where I can easily show off all the walk events since there's hardly anything to do at night by now!
-It's worth noting that the walk events with Koromaru do also carry item rewards and are fully voiced now. For team walk events like with Aigis, we can get a random gem or even better a random Incense I. That's a nice bonus, but not necessarily at the expense of developing our social links or team abilities.
-The Summer Festival dates are now fully voiced, though still follow largely the same script. Note that if you choose to go by yourself, you still get an event with Aigis and Mitsuru.
-We get back-to-back Characteristic unlocks for Yukari, gaining Healing Mastery and Healing Apex in short order! Now Yukari can sling healing spells in and out of battle for a quarter of the cost, which is pretty close to free if healing is all you have Yukari do. If Yukari is in the party, you can pretty much just hit auto-heal after every battle now and keep on trucking for the longest of hauls. Junpei is also getting close to unlocking his upgraded characteristic, which I'm hoping will happen soon.
-In addition to night time hang outs, Koromaru also has a Linked Episode subbing in for a Social Link. I actually like this Linked Episode quite a bit more than his real social link, as they found considerably more interesting plotlines to write for him in Reload.
Social Progress
In FES
Star Social Link: Rank 2
Devil Social Link: Rank 8
Hermit Social Link: MAX
In Portable
Strength Social Link: Rank 3
Hanged Man Social Link: Rank 8
Devil Social Link: Rank 9
In Reload
Hanged Man Social Link: Rank 9
Moon Social Link: Rank 4
Star Social Link: Rank 4
Devil Social Link: Rank 4
Koromaru's Linked Episode: Episode 1 Completed
Junpei's Hang Outs: Gardening 3/3 Reading 2/3
Yukari's Hang Outs: DVD's 3/3 Cooking 3/3
We're officially done with the Hermit link in FES, saving me from losing anymore days to it. Other than that, we've cleaned up Yukari's hang outs and are close to doing the same with Junpei. I'd definitely like to get cracking on Aigis' reading events and Akihiko's events in general, but we're at the mercy of the game for when we can pursue those. We'll also be having a number of our nights locked down by a certain other character in the near future, which will slow things down for the other members of SEES for a time.
The next supplemental video is up! Took me awhile to get this one made as I had to drum up the motivation to sit through the Summer Festival scene 8 times in a row. And since there were multiple dialogue choices I couldn't check out completely while doing so! Regardless, I decided to include all the Reload versions of the MC dates as they are fully voiced and largely follow the same script. One notable distinction between Reload's version of the Summer Festival and every other version is that if you reject everyone in the older versions, Mitsuru forces you to go with her and Aigis. Reload instead allows you to go by yourself, which is somewhat pointless as it just plays a stripped down version of the Aigis/Mitsuru date anyway, but it does have the fairly hilarious consequence of making your MC seem really pathetic. The FemC picks up a couple unique dates, though none with any of the non-SEES social links in her story. We've already seen Akihiko, so here we have the Junpei version of the date, plus a FemC exclusive group outing with Yukari and Fuuka. I also include the FemC's version of the Aigis/Mitsuru date and the dialogue you get should you attempt to refuse Mitsuru. The FemC also gets the option to wear a Yukata, which mildly alters the dialogue of the succeeding scene at the start. Rather disappointingly, we don't get to see what the FemC's Yukata actually looks like right now, and Yuko and Chihiro just don't get one altogether. I'd say Fuuka has the best looking one, btw.
Moving on from that, we've got the handful of social links we were able to fit in between film festival dates. The only notable thing to mention here is that I did ultimately decide to go back and pass on Keisuke's movie invite in order to spend time with Mamoru. It's actually going to be a bit before we see him again since there's a Koromaru walk we can get a free bonus for his link from, and he currently needs additional points for the next rank up. Other than that, we finally finish up Hermit in FES, and the Devil and Tower links are quickly winding down to their conclusion everywhere except Reload. Tanaka and Mutatsu just cannot compete with those Characteristic bonuses in Reload!
Part 35 is out! You know, I was kind of expecting the Summer portion of the game to breeze on through with fairly quick videos but this proved to be surprisingly in depth and complicated to put together. There's a lot of different events for the month of August! Regardless, we get to have delightful film outings with every member of SEES, pick up a new team member with even more dubious ethics behind fielding them, Junpei manages to rizz a weird girl, and school resumes with a robot school girl now on the class roster. We also have delightful evening walks with Koromaru and our friends on occasion. We're now poised to return to Tartarus, and we actually have a ton of new things to work with! It should be pretty exciting.
Extra Notes
In FES
-I want to show off some more weird mechanics that I haven't had a chance to cover now that the schedule going forward is going to be much less frantic. By checking Social Link ranks with your social links, you can also get a preview of what Personae they benefit, based on what your current level is. This is obviously less helpful than just looking up a compendium online, but if you're committed to using no guides it can be occasionally helpful to see what's out there.
-FES' less demanding evening schedule gives me ample time to show off all the team Koromaru walks! One of the more interesting aspects of the walks featured in this video is that you need to attend the film festival outing with the corresponding team member in order to access them. Weird case of an optional event requiring another optional pre-req considering both of these things serve no practical purpose in most cases.
-Ken joins SEES a little undercooked in the skills department, but he's definitely worth the time to train up as his skill list fills out with some pretty choice abilities in due time.
-I accomplish my main Tartarus goals for the moon cycle, reaching level 40 and grabbing 3 specific Personae: Nata-Taishi, Nandi and Cu Chulainn. Nata-Taishi comes with Masukukaja and Herculean Strike, two skills that will be very useful going forward. (For the former, we need the accuracy buff coming up and the latter is just more than twice as strong as Gale Slash). Nandi, with a Rank 3 Star Social Link, learns the Cool Breeze skill on fusion. This skill restores 8% of your HP AND SP upon battle's conclusion should you have a Persona with it equipped. This is the ultimate SP engine of Persona 3 for all practical purposes, and getting it fused around guarantees the Protag will never run dry. Cu Chulainn doesn't have any particular skills I care about, but he is a decent physical attacking Persona that resists elec, which will become important soon. The real reason I want him though is for weapon fusion, which I'll go in more detail on in a little bit.
-One notable skill that Cu Chulainn does have is Power Charge. Now in future Persona titles, this ability applies a 2.3-2.5 multiplier to the next physical attack you perform. In all versions of Persona 3 prior to Reload though, this skill flatly doubles the damage of the next physical attack you perform. This of course means there's no benefit to using it over just simply performing a physical attack two times in a row. In fact, it's often worse than that due to variance in damage rolls potentially resulting in less damage than two attacks in a row. Now one thing that can be done with it (much more easily in Portable) is setting up your buffs and debuffs so that on the second turn you can launch a Power Charged attack that effectively piggybacks the support spells and gives you the functional effect of launching two attacks with all buffs and debuffs in play. I find this too impractical to set up most of the time, but it is technically more effective than just launching two attacks in a row. The other main thing that can be done with this skill (moreso for its sister skill Mind Charge which affects magic attacks) is that in situations where you aren't able to attack a boss on a given turn, you can use a Charge skill to rev up an attack for when the boss is vulnerable again, which does significantly improve your damage over time. There are exactly two fights in the game where this kind of situation crops up with any degree of regularity, and they are the final boss and bonus boss of the game. Never bother with these skills under normal circumstances.
-Onto Cu Chulainn himself, he is the first Persona we get that creates a Unique Weapon when used in weapon fusion. Cu Chulainn will always create the Spear Gae Bolg when fused into any kind of material weapon. Note that Unique Weapons cannot be used for weapon fusion again, so this isn't a way to cheat material weapons you don't have into your inventory. Gae Bolg is pretty obscene for this stage of the game, being a 260 attack power weapon. We're not going to see any weapons on that level until around December! The other significant thing to note about it is that it deals Wind damage instead of Pierce damage. This has implications, as this means its damage is augmented by passives that boost Wind damage. Serendipitously, Gae Bolg has the Wind Boost passive as its ability! By giving a Spear user (so Ken and the Protag) the Vayu Bracers, this boosts the damage they deal with Gae Bolg by 87.5%, which is even better given its really high attack power for this stage of the game! Even better, Gae Bolg is also boosted by the Spear Mastery passive (1.25X damage dealt by Spear weapons), bringing the overall damage boost for the Spear to 2.34X. Guess what passive Ken learns later on? The only two weaknesses it has is that it only has 85% base accuracy, and since it deals Elemental damage it cannot score critical hits. The former is easy to work around, and the latter hardly matters when its damage is so much higher than anything else you can do normally anyway. Gae Bolg will fall off eventually, but it won't be until the literal last month of the game for that to be a concern.
-I use the ample cash I picked up from Tartarus to pick up more Amp bracers. Since we now have multiple characters who benefit from having these, it only makes sense to pick up copies of all Bracers I'd like to use on multiple characters.
In Portable
-For some reason, all film dates with SEES except for Koromaru's and Junpei's boost Academics in this version of the game. I won't complain, that's the one stat we need to boost up anyway and this is an easy way to speed us along.
-SEES movie dates also serve a slightly more practical purpose for the FemC. Now that all SEES members have social links, almost all of them enjoy point bonuses to their social links from these dates. This becomes immediately relevant for Koromaru in this video.
-I have no real reason to get up to level 39 in Portable, so I likely won't have access to Nandi by the time I'm done with Tartarus. I elect to card Growth 2 onto Eligor to get me to Cool Breeze instead, which should hopefully happen by the conclusion of the coming expedition.
-Continuing on from FES with covering things I've yet to show off because they aren't that important, I check out Be Blue V in Portable. The main notable thing you can do here is work Part Time for a now completely irrelevant amount of cash. The other thing is that since Kurosawa now sells accessories, the store itself has been retooled into a sort of health spa. If you are not already in the Great status, you can use Be Blue V to boost the protagonist up to it. You can also use it as a more reliable way of curing the Tired status, but since Yawn-Be-Gones are so cheap and easy to come by, this is a wildly impractical use of a daytime time slot.
-Speaking of impractical uses of Daytime time slots, I hit up Iwatodai Strip Mall to use Wakatsu since I didn't really have anything else going on. The same restaurants that boost your stats in Reload give the same bonus in all previous versions of the game, but you can only ever get a +3 bonus to a social stat and they can only be used during the day. Never bother with the Iwatodai Strip Mall restaurants, they are a complete waste of time for any stat, but especially for anything that isn't Academics. Since the day would have otherwise been wasted on a movie with Junpei though, I decide to hit it up for fun in this video.
-Ken joins SEES with a much better showing in Portable. Ken is the one character who had his skill list completely reworked in the transition to Portable, so not only does he start with Diarama in this version, he learns Medirama after one level up in Portable, even sooner than Yukari! Were I not committed to using Yukari in this version, I'd be kicking her to the curb right now.
-Note that Gae Bolg is still in the game and obtainable in the same way, but I don't really care to get it. I'm not using Ken, who is now the sole person who can use it, and it's also been nerfed slightly. Gae Bolg in this version now has the fairly useless Dodge Wind bonus tied to it instead of Wind Boost, lowering its maximum damage potential considerably. It's still very good, but given the general buffs Ken got here and the relative unimpressive nature of it compared to the FES version, I don't consider it worth going out of your way to pick it up ASAP.
-Semi-related, this is one notable way the MC/FemC are weaker in Portable. They can no longer use the extremely powerful elemental weapons, which is pretty obnoxious considering they were originally the only character who could learn all the relevant weapon boosting passives to maximize the potential of these weapons.
In Reload
-We pick up Junpei's Critical Amp characteristic, which is where Junpei really starts to come into his own in the art of violence. This skill is a flat 10% boost to his crit rate, which a 1.4X damage modifier applied in addition to the usual critical damage bonus. Junpei doesn't have any crit boosting accessories or high crit skills outside of Hack 'n Blast right now, but those pieces will come flying in soon and Junpei will be swinging for the fences all the time once they do.
-We also get Mitsuru pretty close to unlocking her characteristic. Her's is not all that great, but it is interesting and has a unique synergy with Junpei for exploration once we get it.
-I use up the Security Site Note from the suspicious vendor in Club Escapade, which gives us an upgrade to our pre-emptive strike on the field. We'll get to see it in action soon, but the main thing to note is that it will allows us to secure First Strikes regardless of our position relative to the enemy, which is very useful!
-Ken has been revamped a third time, coming into his own more a Light based attacked with more unique support options such as Dekaja and the repel barrier skills Tetrakarn and Makarakarn. Funnily enough, this takes him back a bit to how he is in FES, where it takes a bit of time for him to really pop off. Once he does though, I'd dare say he's just outright broken in this game.
-Upon entering Tartarus, we now have access to two very potent Major Arcana cards: Chariot and Justice. Chariot permanently increases the Protag's HP by 10. I don't think I need to explain why that's good. Justice is also excellent, allowing us to draw two cards per shuffle time instead of one for the remainder of the expedition once we draw it! Absolutely secure the Justice card as soon as possible once you have access to it.
-Related, we can now pretty quickly get to Arcana Burst and enjoy better shuffle times for the entirety of our Tartarus expedition. By returning to blocks you've already cleared and completing the now trivially difficult Monad doors in them, you can rapidly secure Major Arcana cards and reach Arcana Burst within a matter of 10 minutes. I'll do so offscreen going forward so I can maximize the efficiency of my Tartarus trips before I even begin to break new ground.
Social Progress
In FES
Hanged Man Social Link: Rank 8
Star Social Link: Rank 3 (Technically taken care of last video, but I had to redo a portion of the game to get it so I'll reiterate it here)
Devil Social Link: Rank 10
Tower Social Link: Rank 9
Sun Social Link: Rank 2
In Portable
Strength Social Link: Rank 5
Devil Social Link: Rank 10
Tower Social Link: Rank 10
Once we reach the next weekend in FES, the protag will officially no major commitments to worry about at night and can do whatever. I'll likely start playing a bunch of Arcade games to boost up any Personae I care about assuming I don't have to give Koromaru his walkie that night or go to Tartarus. The FemC has 3 additional social links during the evening, resulting in scheduling being slightly more important for her. Two of them are fairly time consuming due to having high point thresholds against low point yields during the rank up events, while the third is an auto progression link that has a time limit and must be hyperfocused in order to complete it. As a result, we'll still have some pretty meticulous planning for the FemC in how she spends her nights going forward, though there will still occasionally be time to do whatever.
In Reload
Devil Social Link: Rank 5
Tower Social Link: Rank 6
Justice Social Link: Rank 8
Mitsuru's Hang Outs: Reading 2/3 Cooking 2/3
Junpei's Hang Outs: Gardening 3/3 Reading 3/3
Akihiko's Hang Outs: DVDs 2/3 Cooking 0/3
Fuuka's Hang Outs: Gardening 1/3 Reading 1/3
Since we mostly attended movies in this version, the social linking has been light in Reload. We've got Junpei in a good place now, and Mitsuru is in the same situation Yukari was in where we can quickly skip having to use her base characteristic to having her enhanced one immediately depending on how the schedule falls. I hope we get more opportunities for Akihiko soon, he's really dependent on his characteristic to really shine. Tanaka and Mutatsu are progressing slowly in this version, but the last two months of the game will be flush with time to hang out with them should it come to that, so you should never really sweat it. Also a full month later, and people STILL think Chihiro stole that money. Poor girl can't catch a break.
Supplemental: Ken Amada FES/Portable
"This is what my power was meant to be used for!
Level 99 Stats
ST: 55
MA: 66
EN: 58
AG: 70
LU: 55
Ken resists Light and is weak to Dark skills. I have to constantly remind myself Ken has no resistance to Elec attacks.
Skills
Hama, Zionga, and Cruel Attack: Starts With
Diarama: Level 37
Hamaon: Level 41
Recarm: Level 42
Mediarama: Level 51*
Hama Boost: Level 54*
Ziodyne: Level 55*
Vile Assault: Level 59*
Diarahan: Level 62*
Spear Master: Level 65*
Samarecarm: Level 73*
Mediarahan: Level 78*
*Skills marked with an asterisk are ones only obtainable after an in-story upgrade. In Ken's case, rather fortunately this comes within a month and some change of him joining.
Ken is a character that generally gets shit on by the playerbase as being the worst party member in the game, but he's always been one of my favorites to use. I was wondering if in my practice runs I'd find that my appraisal of him might be a result of faulty memory, but I've actually walked away thinking he's even better than I previously thought. Ken doesn't have any one thing that he's amazing at (he is at least the only Light user of the team but that's a debatably useful trait on PS2 and a fairly useless one on Portable). As an all rounder, Akihiko has better attacking stats while Koromaru picks up natural boosts for his Fire magic. As a healer, Yukari learns Mediarama a bit sooner than him but they're otherwise fairly even on that front for most of the game. In terms of raw strength, Junpei and Aigis do trump him there though his Spear Master passive allows him to stay over Aigis once he gets it at least. This all leads to a critical thing though: while there are plenty characters who trump Ken in specific areas, Ken has by far the most versatility of any character in the game. Since healing isn't influenced by MA in this game, he's perfectly capable at keeping the party up and running once he gets Mediarama. Since he has more HP than Yukari as well as slightly more EN, this makes him a more dependable healer than her and also grants him a more useful support niche than something like Koromaru's Sukukaja access. Spear Master flatly boosts his weapon damage by 1.25X, giving him much more impressive single target physicals than Aigis unless she commits to Orgia mode, and with a good weapon he honestly is not that far behind Junpei most of the time. Cruel Attack/Vile Assault are mostly useless in FES, but are situationally helpful in Portable. He's an easy check for Light weaknesses, and while his Elec damage is less impressive than Akihiko's, it's not too difficult to get him close enough to matching Akihiko's numbers.
Ken is just a very solid damage dealer with a wide array of attacking options meaning he's almost never walled out, and even if he doesn't have any good options to swing, his healing skills mean he'll never hurt for something to do for the party. Yukari doesn't enjoy any legitimate advantage in healing over him once he gets Mediarama, and while she technically gets Mediarahan sooner, they both practically learn it in time for the same thing: The final boss. Of course depending on what version you are playing, Ken has very specific things that help to put him over the top for me, so let's cover those things now.
In FES
The big thing here is that Light skills more often than not actually hit their mark when cast against a weakness, meaning Hamaon is a genuinely helpful tool Ken has that he learns very quickly. He does have a very sparse starting skill list in this version, but luckily for him he also joins at a point where he can take advantage of the best thing in his bag of tricks: Gae Bolg. Gae Bolg is a Unique Spear created by fusing Cu Chulainn into any weapon material. This Spear comes with the Wind Boost ability and also deals Wind damage instead of Pierce damage. It also affected by the Vayu Bracers and Spear Master, and when you add all those multipliers together with its respectable 260 power, you get a kid that's swinging around a sonic boom in the form of a stick that makes Yukari's wind magic look like a broken desk fan. Not only does Gae Bolg give Ken an extra attacking type to cover, it's just a fantastically powerful attacking option in general. The only thing that slightly undermines it is that the protagonist can also use it in this version, and he can get quite a bit more out of it with a ST focused Persona that has Wind Amp to free his accessory slot. That hardly matters though, it is incredibly effective to just have them both use Gae Bolg. A lot of people trap themselves in the mentality of having diverse attacking options for the sake of it, but if we're not dealing with wind resistant enemies there's simply no reason not to use double Gae Bolg. Additionally, while the protag will eventually find bigger and better things than Gae Bolg, it's always a relevant choice for Ken who can't simply swap his Persona, and it legitimately makes him stronger than any other non-protag character by a pretty considerable margin. It won't be until the last two months of the game that other characters can outpace Gae Bolg, more than likely using their own version of Gae Bolg. Once Gae Bolg does fall off, it's worth it to keep around for the coverage it offers, and in other cases Ken can rock Gungnir which carries the Elec boost ability to pair wonderfully with Indra Bracers. His Spear Master skill also means powerful weapons like Aeon weapons or his ultimate Spear Pinaka do excellent damage in his hands. Ken is going to be locked in for FES, and he's going to be putting in a lot of work going forward.
In Portable
Surprise! Perhaps in response to Ken's chilly reception on PS2, he's be given a revamped skill list in Portable. Ken's redone skill list is as follows,
Hama, Cruel Attack, Zionga and Diarama: Starts With
Mediarama: Level 37 (note that Ken joins at level 36)
Hamaon: Level 41
Recarm: Level 42
Spear Master: Level 54*
Ziodyne: Level 55*
Vile Assault: Level 59*
Diarahan: Level 62*
Primal Force: Level 65*
Samarecarm: Level 73*
Mediarahan: Level 78*
Some interesting changes here to say the least. Ken picks up Medirama almost immediately, and 6 levels sooner than Yukari to boot, meaning he's a flatly superior healer to her in this version by any practical metric. Spear Master is learned much sooner, although Hama Boost is lost for Primal Force, an addition to Ken's arsenal that makes about as much sense as a return address on an envelope of anthrax. Otherwise the rest of his arsenal is obtained as normal. Some other notable things about the transition to Portable, Light skills just flatly suck in this version and almost never hit anything, especially without the corresponding boost. Hamaon by extension is something of a brick in Ken's skill list now. Gae Bolg has been nerfed slightly, now having the Dodge Wind ability instead of Wind Boost, which is useless on multiple levels for Ken. That said, that merely lowers its maximum potential to "very good" instead of "busted", so it's not an option to be slept on. Since he picks up Mediarama so early in this version, Ken leans more heavily on his support capabilities, and he's darn good with them. He's both sturdier and more evasive than Yukari, and he can pack a mean punch once he grabs Spear Master. Since we don't have to worry about it lifting an enemy up to act again anymore, Cruel Attack/Vile Assault is also a decently useful beatstick option in this game. There are some enemies that we can knock down that don't just get deleted by an All-Out Attack, and the 50% damage bonus these skills get against downed enemies can layout some hefty punishment when we're dealing with them. Like Aigis and Junpei, Ken also benefits from the highly buffed Giga Power Bands, for those situations where his best option is poke the enemy with his Spear Master augmented stick. Were I not committed to the Teen Girl Squad, Ken would also be locked in for Portable because he's just incredibly useful here. While damage potential doesn't reach quite the same highs as it does in FES, he still does quite well. Gae Bolg is now also an exclusive option for him, so the boost it gives him is relatively more pronounced here.
All-in-all, Ken's just an incredible damage dealer for a large portion of the game from this point on, and when others begin to overtake him he has a useful secondary specialization in healing to fall back on. His versatility means there's never really a bad situation to have him in the party for, and his redundancies with characters like Akihiko hardly matter when most random battles from this point aren't going to make it past the Protagonist's turn. Don't sleep on Ken, he is fantastic in these games and I hope to demonstrate why that is as we go.
"This is what my power was meant to be used for!
Level 99 Stats
ST: 55
MA: 66
EN: 58
AG: 70
LU: 55
Ken resists Light and is weak to Dark skills. I have to constantly remind myself Ken has no resistance to Elec attacks.
Skills
Hama, Zionga, and Cruel Attack: Starts With
Diarama: Level 37
Hamaon: Level 41
Recarm: Level 42
Mediarama: Level 51*
Hama Boost: Level 54*
Ziodyne: Level 55*
Vile Assault: Level 59*
Diarahan: Level 62*
Spear Master: Level 65*
Samarecarm: Level 73*
Mediarahan: Level 78*
*Skills marked with an asterisk are ones only obtainable after an in-story upgrade. In Ken's case, rather fortunately this comes within a month and some change of him joining.
Ken is a character that generally gets shit on by the playerbase as being the worst party member in the game, but he's always been one of my favorites to use. I was wondering if in my practice runs I'd find that my appraisal of him might be a result of faulty memory, but I've actually walked away thinking he's even better than I previously thought. Ken doesn't have any one thing that he's amazing at (he is at least the only Light user of the team but that's a debatably useful trait on PS2 and a fairly useless one on Portable). As an all rounder, Akihiko has better attacking stats while Koromaru picks up natural boosts for his Fire magic. As a healer, Yukari learns Mediarama a bit sooner than him but they're otherwise fairly even on that front for most of the game. In terms of raw strength, Junpei and Aigis do trump him there though his Spear Master passive allows him to stay over Aigis once he gets it at least. This all leads to a critical thing though: while there are plenty characters who trump Ken in specific areas, Ken has by far the most versatility of any character in the game. Since healing isn't influenced by MA in this game, he's perfectly capable at keeping the party up and running once he gets Mediarama. Since he has more HP than Yukari as well as slightly more EN, this makes him a more dependable healer than her and also grants him a more useful support niche than something like Koromaru's Sukukaja access. Spear Master flatly boosts his weapon damage by 1.25X, giving him much more impressive single target physicals than Aigis unless she commits to Orgia mode, and with a good weapon he honestly is not that far behind Junpei most of the time. Cruel Attack/Vile Assault are mostly useless in FES, but are situationally helpful in Portable. He's an easy check for Light weaknesses, and while his Elec damage is less impressive than Akihiko's, it's not too difficult to get him close enough to matching Akihiko's numbers.
Ken is just a very solid damage dealer with a wide array of attacking options meaning he's almost never walled out, and even if he doesn't have any good options to swing, his healing skills mean he'll never hurt for something to do for the party. Yukari doesn't enjoy any legitimate advantage in healing over him once he gets Mediarama, and while she technically gets Mediarahan sooner, they both practically learn it in time for the same thing: The final boss. Of course depending on what version you are playing, Ken has very specific things that help to put him over the top for me, so let's cover those things now.
In FES
The big thing here is that Light skills more often than not actually hit their mark when cast against a weakness, meaning Hamaon is a genuinely helpful tool Ken has that he learns very quickly. He does have a very sparse starting skill list in this version, but luckily for him he also joins at a point where he can take advantage of the best thing in his bag of tricks: Gae Bolg. Gae Bolg is a Unique Spear created by fusing Cu Chulainn into any weapon material. This Spear comes with the Wind Boost ability and also deals Wind damage instead of Pierce damage. It also affected by the Vayu Bracers and Spear Master, and when you add all those multipliers together with its respectable 260 power, you get a kid that's swinging around a sonic boom in the form of a stick that makes Yukari's wind magic look like a broken desk fan. Not only does Gae Bolg give Ken an extra attacking type to cover, it's just a fantastically powerful attacking option in general. The only thing that slightly undermines it is that the protagonist can also use it in this version, and he can get quite a bit more out of it with a ST focused Persona that has Wind Amp to free his accessory slot. That hardly matters though, it is incredibly effective to just have them both use Gae Bolg. A lot of people trap themselves in the mentality of having diverse attacking options for the sake of it, but if we're not dealing with wind resistant enemies there's simply no reason not to use double Gae Bolg. Additionally, while the protag will eventually find bigger and better things than Gae Bolg, it's always a relevant choice for Ken who can't simply swap his Persona, and it legitimately makes him stronger than any other non-protag character by a pretty considerable margin. It won't be until the last two months of the game that other characters can outpace Gae Bolg, more than likely using their own version of Gae Bolg. Once Gae Bolg does fall off, it's worth it to keep around for the coverage it offers, and in other cases Ken can rock Gungnir which carries the Elec boost ability to pair wonderfully with Indra Bracers. His Spear Master skill also means powerful weapons like Aeon weapons or his ultimate Spear Pinaka do excellent damage in his hands. Ken is going to be locked in for FES, and he's going to be putting in a lot of work going forward.
In Portable
Surprise! Perhaps in response to Ken's chilly reception on PS2, he's be given a revamped skill list in Portable. Ken's redone skill list is as follows,
Hama, Cruel Attack, Zionga and Diarama: Starts With
Mediarama: Level 37 (note that Ken joins at level 36)
Hamaon: Level 41
Recarm: Level 42
Spear Master: Level 54*
Ziodyne: Level 55*
Vile Assault: Level 59*
Diarahan: Level 62*
Primal Force: Level 65*
Samarecarm: Level 73*
Mediarahan: Level 78*
Some interesting changes here to say the least. Ken picks up Medirama almost immediately, and 6 levels sooner than Yukari to boot, meaning he's a flatly superior healer to her in this version by any practical metric. Spear Master is learned much sooner, although Hama Boost is lost for Primal Force, an addition to Ken's arsenal that makes about as much sense as a return address on an envelope of anthrax. Otherwise the rest of his arsenal is obtained as normal. Some other notable things about the transition to Portable, Light skills just flatly suck in this version and almost never hit anything, especially without the corresponding boost. Hamaon by extension is something of a brick in Ken's skill list now. Gae Bolg has been nerfed slightly, now having the Dodge Wind ability instead of Wind Boost, which is useless on multiple levels for Ken. That said, that merely lowers its maximum potential to "very good" instead of "busted", so it's not an option to be slept on. Since he picks up Mediarama so early in this version, Ken leans more heavily on his support capabilities, and he's darn good with them. He's both sturdier and more evasive than Yukari, and he can pack a mean punch once he grabs Spear Master. Since we don't have to worry about it lifting an enemy up to act again anymore, Cruel Attack/Vile Assault is also a decently useful beatstick option in this game. There are some enemies that we can knock down that don't just get deleted by an All-Out Attack, and the 50% damage bonus these skills get against downed enemies can layout some hefty punishment when we're dealing with them. Like Aigis and Junpei, Ken also benefits from the highly buffed Giga Power Bands, for those situations where his best option is poke the enemy with his Spear Master augmented stick. Were I not committed to the Teen Girl Squad, Ken would also be locked in for Portable because he's just incredibly useful here. While damage potential doesn't reach quite the same highs as it does in FES, he still does quite well. Gae Bolg is now also an exclusive option for him, so the boost it gives him is relatively more pronounced here.
All-in-all, Ken's just an incredible damage dealer for a large portion of the game from this point on, and when others begin to overtake him he has a useful secondary specialization in healing to fall back on. His versatility means there's never really a bad situation to have him in the party for, and his redundancies with characters like Akihiko hardly matter when most random battles from this point aren't going to make it past the Protagonist's turn. Don't sleep on Ken, he is fantastic in these games and I hope to demonstrate why that is as we go.
Supplemental: Ken Amada Reload
"I have to do... what must be done... I have to!"
Skills
Zionga, Kougaon, Mediarama, Makarakarn, Dekaja: Starts With
Makouga: Level 38
Tetrakarn: Level 42
Samarecarm: Level 47
Vile Assault: Level 51
Ziodyne: Level 55
Mahamaon: Level 60
Mediarahan: Level 64
Makougaon: Level 68
Light Amp: Level 72
Heat Riser: Level 76
That's certainly a lot more tricks Ken has up his sleeve in this version! In Reload, Ken leans much harder into being a dedicated support. In addition to his healing, which retains the Portable buff he got of getting the good stuff sooner than Yukari, Ken also picks up Tetrakarn to bounce physical attacks, Makarakarn for a one hit nullification of a character's weakness, Dekaja for enemy buff canceling, and end game he can grab Heat Riser which has some situational application. Most of his Light skills have been subbed out for the new Kouha line, with Mahamaon being added as a late game pick up (That I couldn't particularly recommend). Yukari does actually have a slight edge as a dedicated healer here as MA does affect healing power in this game, but it's a minor advantage for most of the game and is easily rendered moot with an accessory that can replicate Divine Grace (or you know, the fixed power Mediarahan). On the offensive front, the Kouha line is flatly stronger than other elements and the end game Light Amp can make the damage of Kougaon pretty sizable. Vile Assault is also a fairly good option somewhat stymied by Ken's mediocre natural ST, while Ken's Elec magic largely retains its purpose of being just for weakness exploitation.
Of course this leads into an obvious problem: you can only have 8 skills so some cuts must be made. Much like future characters such as Teddie and Haru, Ken has many good skills to choose from, but he simply cannot have them all. This means at some point you'll have to pick a lane for him and drop some of the chaff from his skill list. For my money, it's best to have Ken focus on his support and drop most of his attacking options. Taking the two Karn skills, the Dia and Recarm skills and Dekaja leaves us with 3 skill slots. I tend to prefer single target damage for magic if I have to absolutely make a choice, so I usually leave Kougaon and grab Light Amp later to maximize the potency of that if Ken genuinely has nothing left to do. Your final skill just comes down to preference really, and every potential non-light skill choice has its perks. Vile Assault is a decent damaging skill, but Ken's not the best user of it. Zio gives Ken a non-redundant coverage option considering his Spears already do Pierce damage, but it is easily Ken's weakest attacking option and serves no purpose outside of hitting weaknesses. Finally, Heat Riser is a single target buff skill that applies all 3 buff types. Personally, I think having two other characters just up Matarukaja and Marakukaja is all the buffing you ever need (to say nothing of how auto team buffs render this skill pointless for the first 3 turns of a battle) but Heat Riser can be a nice way to quickly re-establish buffs on a character about to use a Theurgy if they happened to be purged or countered by the enemy. I'll probably end up rocking Ziodyne or Vile Assault by the end game for him, but I could easily end up changing my mind once that point rolls around since I largely prefer Ken for his support skills anyway.
So how does Ken stack up to his prior iterations? He's very good! He's almost inarguably the best supporter (Yukari is a good healer but the only support option she has outside of that is the Sukunda line) and he has a wide array of exclusive options that make him stand out heavily from the rest of the cast compared to his generalist archetype in FES/Portable. He still has his slight durability edge on Yukari, and his wide coverage combined with fast speed means he often goes first and has ample options to initiate Shifts, which has its own strategic applications. Does Ken have any flaws? Well compared to FES/Portable where he had an above average SP pool, his SP pool in Reload is the lowest in the game. Ken can run dry during exploration very fast, though this surprisingly turns out to be a mixed blessing for reasons will cover in a bit. How do I feel about Ken? You might be shocked to hear given my fairly positive appraisal of him in FES/Portable but I actually don't like using Ken that much in Reload. Not because he's bad, mind, but because he's very good in a very boring way. He has excellent healing from the jump, can revive people too, he can spam out Reflects to counter any potential weakness in your line up and his damage is just kind of bad in this version so I rarely have him do anything but support in boss fights. In FES and Portable, he has very versatile damage dealing options and it's a fun experiment to maximize those and see just what the fledgling SEES member is capable of. In Reload, he just hangs back and heal-bots most of the time. A valuable thing, to be certain, but not super exciting to me on a personal level. Still, I plan to use everyone fairly equally, so we'll be seeing plenty of Ken going forward. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves though, we still have some things to go over for Ken. You might not be sold on him just yet, but there's one addition to Ken's loadout that is near universally agreed to put him over the top.
Characteristic and Theurgy
On certain evenings, you can spend time with Ken either cooking (okay, brewing coffee but functionally it's the same) or watching DVDs. Upon completing 3 of either of these activities, Ken will gain the Spirt Refresh characteristic. Once Ken has this, he will regen 5 SP at the start of his turn though not when he gets a One More. This is important and unfortunate. Once all 6 hang outs have been completed, Ken's characteristic upgrades to Spirit Restore which doubles the effect, restoring 10 SP when his turn comes around. Starting with Koromaru, the characteristics you start seeing are a lot less flashy and definitely less useful, but Ken has one of the better ones gained at that point. Since his max SP is so low, on a single turn this is essentially a 10 SP reduction to any spell he casts. This is nowhere close to the economical boon of Healing Apex, but it's also perfectly fine. You can also stack it with accessories that replicate the Invigorate ability line or the Shift SP restorative skills to gain even more of a per turn refund. Because it doesn't proc on One More, it doesn't help too much if your using Ken to exploit weaknesses left and right, but Shifting off of him immediately when he does score a weakness hit can give him a lot more mileage. There is one other perk of this passive just being a roundabout universal 10 SP reduction to all of Ken's spells.
Ken's Theurgy has a fairly unique charge condition that turns a weakness into a strength. When Ken's current SP is 50% or less of his maximum, Ken gains additional Theurgy charge. Since Ken casts fairly expensive spells with a low SP pool backing them, he rapidly reaches this condition and charges his Theurgy super quick. In boss fights, it's quite easy to keep him there as well without actually running out, since in most boss battles he'll seldom be scoring One Mores. Do his Theurgies make this a huge boon for him? Almost exactly like Koromaru, Ken brings a whatever-tier offensive Theurgy to the table and an absolutely cracked support Theurgy alongside it.
Divine Retribution: A single target Light skill that has good base power, but like with Koromaru it's really hard for me to recommend this considering the alternative. Don't get me wrong, I did see the comments about how stacking up passives for Koromaru and adding in Concentrate by any way you can get it does make the relatively pedestrian Theurgy really shine, and much the same is true for Ken I'm sure. The thing is though, stacking passives and buffs to jack up Theurgy damage is not something only Ken or Koromaru can do, and there is definitely an opportunity cost into boosting up these skills over what you can do with the alternative. I could Concentrate an optimized Koromaru, or I could have him Charge up Junpei and Orgia Mode Aigis and have both of them unload for what is likely better damage than what Koromaru can do, and that's how I feel about this skill too. A fun novelty if you build around it, but I definitely think the alternative is more practical. I really do think this one should have been multi-targeting at least, I feel like that would have benefitted it greatly.
Divine Intervention: I pretty regularly see this called the most broken Theurgy in the game, and I'm inclined to agree with that. Divine Intervention is another support Theurgy, and it has one hell of an effect. When cast, it fires off Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Tetrakarn and Makarakarn all at once on the entire party. To simplify that, it fully heals the entire party and makes them functionally immortal in 98% of the battles in the game for 1 or possibly even 2 turns. And because Ken can get his Theurgy back up very quickly with his charge condition, he can often have this ready to go again within a few turns if the fight starts going poorly for you somehow. This is the apex of unique Ken skills in Reload. Since Tetrakarn and Makarakarn have been nerfed into single target skills in recent Persona games, this is the only way to get Repel barriers on the entire party in one action, and it ups both varieties. The only other way you can revive multiple characters at once is with Fuuka's Theurgy, and that doesn't come online nearly as quickly as Ken's does. Admittedly, since the Protagonist dying is a game over and Ken obviously needs to be alive to cast his Theurgy, you'll never be able to revive more than two people with it, but it's not impossible for that situation to crop up. This is another thing that make me feel Ken is pretty boring to use in Reload. Since he's constantly healing the party anyway, you have little reason to not just fire this off as soon as you get it. It's a free party heal that guarantees at least one turn of no incoming damage, and once it's gone Ken can get right into charging the next one up should it come down to that. Even beyond the obvious benefits, it has really potent non-obvious benefits. The only almighty ailment skill in the game is Virus Breath (which you almost never see), so Tetrakarn and Makarakarn can deflect any ailment thrown your way, making this skill also have the function of warding off ailments and ensuring your other characters can use their Theurgies when their turn comes around. Divine Intervention is the ultimate support skill in the game. I can't even tell you to accept no substitutes because nothing else even comes close to the utility of this skill. Just to take it one step further, Ken is also one of the first characters to get his storyline upgrade, which is just a little over a month after he joins. You get a lot more time to enjoy just how obscene this Theurgy is.
I can tell they really wanted people to give Ken a fair shake in Reload, and I think they might have overcorrected because he is ridiculously overtuned in this game. He outright starts with better healing than Yukari in this version (as opposed to Portable where he at least had to get one level up to secure that) and while Yukari does catch up on that front, she never quite hits the same highs Ken does on team support. His ability to spam heals and repels while also having more niche traits like buff purging and wide coverage means you can basically never go wrong with brining him along. At the same time, while he has picked up some new damage dealing options, Reload places greater emphasis on having good stats and good attack skill access to deal high damage, and Ken definitely falters a bit here. Not to say he can't deal good damage, but he will never come close to the offensive specialists in that regard (even less so than Koromaru!), so I can't say it's super practical to try and build him that way for anything other than deliberately trying to shake things up. Like I said before, I find Ken to be really boring in this game. Previously I found him to be a diamond in the rough that had loads of interesting options in fights, while in Reload he's just kind of too perfect with the correct moves for him to make almost always being obvious. Of course if I'm just trying to recommend a team for people struggling with the game and are looking for an easy win, Ken is one of the first people I'd recommend they add when they get access to him. He covers all your healing and defensive needs, and his own deficiencies are easily accounted for. Feed him some Guard Incenses and slap on a Dark nullifying accessory, and you find yourself with a nigh unkillable anchor for your team who can keep them going the distance.
"I have to do... what must be done... I have to!"
Skills
Zionga, Kougaon, Mediarama, Makarakarn, Dekaja: Starts With
Makouga: Level 38
Tetrakarn: Level 42
Samarecarm: Level 47
Vile Assault: Level 51
Ziodyne: Level 55
Mahamaon: Level 60
Mediarahan: Level 64
Makougaon: Level 68
Light Amp: Level 72
Heat Riser: Level 76
That's certainly a lot more tricks Ken has up his sleeve in this version! In Reload, Ken leans much harder into being a dedicated support. In addition to his healing, which retains the Portable buff he got of getting the good stuff sooner than Yukari, Ken also picks up Tetrakarn to bounce physical attacks, Makarakarn for a one hit nullification of a character's weakness, Dekaja for enemy buff canceling, and end game he can grab Heat Riser which has some situational application. Most of his Light skills have been subbed out for the new Kouha line, with Mahamaon being added as a late game pick up (That I couldn't particularly recommend). Yukari does actually have a slight edge as a dedicated healer here as MA does affect healing power in this game, but it's a minor advantage for most of the game and is easily rendered moot with an accessory that can replicate Divine Grace (or you know, the fixed power Mediarahan). On the offensive front, the Kouha line is flatly stronger than other elements and the end game Light Amp can make the damage of Kougaon pretty sizable. Vile Assault is also a fairly good option somewhat stymied by Ken's mediocre natural ST, while Ken's Elec magic largely retains its purpose of being just for weakness exploitation.
Of course this leads into an obvious problem: you can only have 8 skills so some cuts must be made. Much like future characters such as Teddie and Haru, Ken has many good skills to choose from, but he simply cannot have them all. This means at some point you'll have to pick a lane for him and drop some of the chaff from his skill list. For my money, it's best to have Ken focus on his support and drop most of his attacking options. Taking the two Karn skills, the Dia and Recarm skills and Dekaja leaves us with 3 skill slots. I tend to prefer single target damage for magic if I have to absolutely make a choice, so I usually leave Kougaon and grab Light Amp later to maximize the potency of that if Ken genuinely has nothing left to do. Your final skill just comes down to preference really, and every potential non-light skill choice has its perks. Vile Assault is a decent damaging skill, but Ken's not the best user of it. Zio gives Ken a non-redundant coverage option considering his Spears already do Pierce damage, but it is easily Ken's weakest attacking option and serves no purpose outside of hitting weaknesses. Finally, Heat Riser is a single target buff skill that applies all 3 buff types. Personally, I think having two other characters just up Matarukaja and Marakukaja is all the buffing you ever need (to say nothing of how auto team buffs render this skill pointless for the first 3 turns of a battle) but Heat Riser can be a nice way to quickly re-establish buffs on a character about to use a Theurgy if they happened to be purged or countered by the enemy. I'll probably end up rocking Ziodyne or Vile Assault by the end game for him, but I could easily end up changing my mind once that point rolls around since I largely prefer Ken for his support skills anyway.
So how does Ken stack up to his prior iterations? He's very good! He's almost inarguably the best supporter (Yukari is a good healer but the only support option she has outside of that is the Sukunda line) and he has a wide array of exclusive options that make him stand out heavily from the rest of the cast compared to his generalist archetype in FES/Portable. He still has his slight durability edge on Yukari, and his wide coverage combined with fast speed means he often goes first and has ample options to initiate Shifts, which has its own strategic applications. Does Ken have any flaws? Well compared to FES/Portable where he had an above average SP pool, his SP pool in Reload is the lowest in the game. Ken can run dry during exploration very fast, though this surprisingly turns out to be a mixed blessing for reasons will cover in a bit. How do I feel about Ken? You might be shocked to hear given my fairly positive appraisal of him in FES/Portable but I actually don't like using Ken that much in Reload. Not because he's bad, mind, but because he's very good in a very boring way. He has excellent healing from the jump, can revive people too, he can spam out Reflects to counter any potential weakness in your line up and his damage is just kind of bad in this version so I rarely have him do anything but support in boss fights. In FES and Portable, he has very versatile damage dealing options and it's a fun experiment to maximize those and see just what the fledgling SEES member is capable of. In Reload, he just hangs back and heal-bots most of the time. A valuable thing, to be certain, but not super exciting to me on a personal level. Still, I plan to use everyone fairly equally, so we'll be seeing plenty of Ken going forward. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves though, we still have some things to go over for Ken. You might not be sold on him just yet, but there's one addition to Ken's loadout that is near universally agreed to put him over the top.
Characteristic and Theurgy
On certain evenings, you can spend time with Ken either cooking (okay, brewing coffee but functionally it's the same) or watching DVDs. Upon completing 3 of either of these activities, Ken will gain the Spirt Refresh characteristic. Once Ken has this, he will regen 5 SP at the start of his turn though not when he gets a One More. This is important and unfortunate. Once all 6 hang outs have been completed, Ken's characteristic upgrades to Spirit Restore which doubles the effect, restoring 10 SP when his turn comes around. Starting with Koromaru, the characteristics you start seeing are a lot less flashy and definitely less useful, but Ken has one of the better ones gained at that point. Since his max SP is so low, on a single turn this is essentially a 10 SP reduction to any spell he casts. This is nowhere close to the economical boon of Healing Apex, but it's also perfectly fine. You can also stack it with accessories that replicate the Invigorate ability line or the Shift SP restorative skills to gain even more of a per turn refund. Because it doesn't proc on One More, it doesn't help too much if your using Ken to exploit weaknesses left and right, but Shifting off of him immediately when he does score a weakness hit can give him a lot more mileage. There is one other perk of this passive just being a roundabout universal 10 SP reduction to all of Ken's spells.
Ken's Theurgy has a fairly unique charge condition that turns a weakness into a strength. When Ken's current SP is 50% or less of his maximum, Ken gains additional Theurgy charge. Since Ken casts fairly expensive spells with a low SP pool backing them, he rapidly reaches this condition and charges his Theurgy super quick. In boss fights, it's quite easy to keep him there as well without actually running out, since in most boss battles he'll seldom be scoring One Mores. Do his Theurgies make this a huge boon for him? Almost exactly like Koromaru, Ken brings a whatever-tier offensive Theurgy to the table and an absolutely cracked support Theurgy alongside it.
Divine Retribution: A single target Light skill that has good base power, but like with Koromaru it's really hard for me to recommend this considering the alternative. Don't get me wrong, I did see the comments about how stacking up passives for Koromaru and adding in Concentrate by any way you can get it does make the relatively pedestrian Theurgy really shine, and much the same is true for Ken I'm sure. The thing is though, stacking passives and buffs to jack up Theurgy damage is not something only Ken or Koromaru can do, and there is definitely an opportunity cost into boosting up these skills over what you can do with the alternative. I could Concentrate an optimized Koromaru, or I could have him Charge up Junpei and Orgia Mode Aigis and have both of them unload for what is likely better damage than what Koromaru can do, and that's how I feel about this skill too. A fun novelty if you build around it, but I definitely think the alternative is more practical. I really do think this one should have been multi-targeting at least, I feel like that would have benefitted it greatly.
Divine Intervention: I pretty regularly see this called the most broken Theurgy in the game, and I'm inclined to agree with that. Divine Intervention is another support Theurgy, and it has one hell of an effect. When cast, it fires off Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Tetrakarn and Makarakarn all at once on the entire party. To simplify that, it fully heals the entire party and makes them functionally immortal in 98% of the battles in the game for 1 or possibly even 2 turns. And because Ken can get his Theurgy back up very quickly with his charge condition, he can often have this ready to go again within a few turns if the fight starts going poorly for you somehow. This is the apex of unique Ken skills in Reload. Since Tetrakarn and Makarakarn have been nerfed into single target skills in recent Persona games, this is the only way to get Repel barriers on the entire party in one action, and it ups both varieties. The only other way you can revive multiple characters at once is with Fuuka's Theurgy, and that doesn't come online nearly as quickly as Ken's does. Admittedly, since the Protagonist dying is a game over and Ken obviously needs to be alive to cast his Theurgy, you'll never be able to revive more than two people with it, but it's not impossible for that situation to crop up. This is another thing that make me feel Ken is pretty boring to use in Reload. Since he's constantly healing the party anyway, you have little reason to not just fire this off as soon as you get it. It's a free party heal that guarantees at least one turn of no incoming damage, and once it's gone Ken can get right into charging the next one up should it come down to that. Even beyond the obvious benefits, it has really potent non-obvious benefits. The only almighty ailment skill in the game is Virus Breath (which you almost never see), so Tetrakarn and Makarakarn can deflect any ailment thrown your way, making this skill also have the function of warding off ailments and ensuring your other characters can use their Theurgies when their turn comes around. Divine Intervention is the ultimate support skill in the game. I can't even tell you to accept no substitutes because nothing else even comes close to the utility of this skill. Just to take it one step further, Ken is also one of the first characters to get his storyline upgrade, which is just a little over a month after he joins. You get a lot more time to enjoy just how obscene this Theurgy is.
I can tell they really wanted people to give Ken a fair shake in Reload, and I think they might have overcorrected because he is ridiculously overtuned in this game. He outright starts with better healing than Yukari in this version (as opposed to Portable where he at least had to get one level up to secure that) and while Yukari does catch up on that front, she never quite hits the same highs Ken does on team support. His ability to spam heals and repels while also having more niche traits like buff purging and wide coverage means you can basically never go wrong with brining him along. At the same time, while he has picked up some new damage dealing options, Reload places greater emphasis on having good stats and good attack skill access to deal high damage, and Ken definitely falters a bit here. Not to say he can't deal good damage, but he will never come close to the offensive specialists in that regard (even less so than Koromaru!), so I can't say it's super practical to try and build him that way for anything other than deliberately trying to shake things up. Like I said before, I find Ken to be really boring in this game. Previously I found him to be a diamond in the rough that had loads of interesting options in fights, while in Reload he's just kind of too perfect with the correct moves for him to make almost always being obvious. Of course if I'm just trying to recommend a team for people struggling with the game and are looking for an easy win, Ken is one of the first people I'd recommend they add when they get access to him. He covers all your healing and defensive needs, and his own deficiencies are easily accounted for. Feed him some Guard Incenses and slap on a Dark nullifying accessory, and you find yourself with a nigh unkillable anchor for your team who can keep them going the distance.
The next supplemental video is out! I forwent all movie dates with SEES except for Fuuka's, who we have to go with to keep progress on her Social Link going on schedule. Correspondingly, we makes tons of progress on Maiko's link, initiate Akinari's and complete Bunkichi & Mitsuko's link. We also finish off Tanaka in FES and are poised to finish with Mutatsu soon as well. With those two done, we will have complete freedom to do whatever during the nights in FES unless I want to walk Koromaru with somebody. Over in Portable, most of the links covered in the last video were exclusive and have already been seen, so we just had the capstone for Tanaka and Mutatsu to show here. Portable is probably going to feature much more infrequently in the social link videos going forward, as we have multiple FemC exclusive links unlocking in the near future and we're also going to be pursuing the established unique links we already have such as Saori and Rio.
I've got all the footage for the next Tartarus video recorded, so hopefully I should be able to edit the first portion of it together and get it uploaded this weekend. I do have an upcoming vacation, so it'll likely be a few weeks until we get to the next Full Moon since I try to avoid spamming out hour long videos.
Part 36 is out! It's another cycle end Tartarus blitz... in Portable and Reload anyway! I've had Tartarus done for awhile in FES, which is honestly something I really appreciate about the more flexible night scheduling that game has. The second half of Yabbashah mostly serves as a good proving ground for our new additions to SEES, there are many enemies weak to Ken and Koromaru here. Their performance in boss fights is a bit more dubious currently, though Koromaru comes in with the raw stats and skills to do fairly well in spite of that. Beyond that, it's a fairly droll expedition with no interesting shake ups like the last trip had. Look forward to the next part though, I play like complete ass in Reload due to forgetting a couple of key things that would have made The Journey much easier.
Extra Notes
In FES
-Much like Aigis, Koromaru joins ready to use and quite good for this stage of the game really. He's a dubious late game member, but joining with Tier 2 magic just after we got the Amp Bracers allows him to notch pretty high damage against anything not Fire resistant. He's also very sturdy and has an uncommon (though dangerous) weakness, meaning he'll usually chip in every turn he gets. He probably won't see much use after this moon cycle in FES because Junpei picks up the insanely useful Marakukaja once he breaks into the 40's, but may as well put him to work for now.
-By contrast, Aigis is already flagging in the damage department, even when in Orgia mode. Luckily I'll be trying to make her work in Portable instead, so she'll likely be toasting the bench for the foreseeable future in FES.
-Ken is largely absent from this first video for FES simply because I did the first expedition shortly after Koromaru joined but before Ken did. I made sure to include a brief rundown for him that I recorded in the second expedition video.
-This holds true for Portable as well, you'll absolutely want to get an item-bearing Narcissus and level it to the point that it produces its item. It'll be very important to have at least one Narcissus Flower for the second Tartarus boss for this cycle, and it'll also come in handy for a Full Moon boss down the line.
-Another shared Portable mechanic, this is something I've been nebulously aware of but not until this LP did I really think of actually utilizing this to streamline things. Take note of any floors where you get money or equipment! While loot gained in Tartarus is random on a per chest basis, it's important to note that there is a method to how the game decides what you get. Each floor in Tartarus has a specific item list it pulls from to determine the loot you get e.g. on Floor 91 I get money and a piece of equipment from the chests meaning you'll always get that type of treasure on floor 91, and while these obviously update with better stuff as you ascend higher and higher, these lists are what you can always expect to find when returning to certain floors! The item lists come in 3 distinct flavors,
1.) "Garbage floors". If you ever get near-literal trash like Rotten Gravy, Odd Morsels, or a Muscle Drink, you're on a garbage floor. These floors seldom ever provide anything but these items should you search them, though I THINK there's occasional "prizes" like money and potent healing items such as Revival Beads. Mostly you just get trash from these though. Note down any floors where you get the three previously mentioned items as something to speed through and not even bother with chests when training/farming in Tartarus.
2.) "Cheap Pharma floors". If you get any of the Dis-Whatever cures from a chest, you're almost certainly on a Cheap Pharma floor. You'll get Dis items, Me Patra Gems, Medicines and Medical Powders, stuff like that. Proving to be something akin to those drug stores that also have antiquities on the side, you also occasionally get the attack items gems that replicate spells from these floors. As you ascend higher and higher, these floors also have not terrible odds of spitting out items like Revival Beads and Beads, so they can be worth scouring if you're in need of the latter. Otherwise I usually just pass on by these.
3.) "Payday floors." Large monetary payouts and equipment awaits you on these floors! These are the floors to take note of, and are absolutely the ones you want to scour. These will aware you with better and better amounts of money/types of equipment as you ascend Tartarus. These allow you to outfit your party for free and build up your liquid assets for any potential purchases you'd like to make! For what we explore within this video, floors 91, 93, 95 and 96 are Payday floors, and should be the ones to beeline to when going back through this portion of Yabbashah.
There doesn't seem to be any consistent pattern to how the game decides what floor is a Payday floor, although odd numbered floors, perhaps by coincidence, are more often Payday floors. You can also have multiple Payday floors in a row, as seen in the above examples, so be sure to check and take notes on every floor!
-Money chests are kind of interesting, as while the maximum payout for them gradually goes up like you'd expect, the lower limit for what you can get from them never really changes. Even by the endgame, it is not impossible for a chest at floor 236 to give you 4 figure or even 3 figure cash payouts depending on what the RNG spits out. For this section of Yabbashah, the most we can expect is around 49-50k Yen, but you'll only occasionally get that. Set your expectations for around 10-20k Yen. As per usual, since equipment sell prices are doubled in Portable, you can expect slightly more stable income from equipment chests though it is not something you get on-demand, which is important to keep in mind if you have any compendium purchases you need to make immediately.
-So how do Rare chests factor into all this? In general, any floor can have Rare Chests with about a 10% chance or so that a chest is Rare instead of the usual silver briefcase. Rare chest also have floor-dependent item lists they pull from, though it works a little different. On Garbage and Cheap Pharma floors, Rare chests pull from a "common" pull of valuable consumables. Attack Mirrors, Magic Mirrors, the ever valuable Homunculus, and Balms of Life are what you can expect from Rare chests on these floors, and these are the only reason you'd ever want to scour these floors. When a Rare chest spawns on a Payday floor, it instead has an equipment pool it pulls from that is floor dependent. A good example of how this works is the Rare Katanas. Juzumaru, one we haven't thought about in awhile, was the sole equipment you could get from Rare Chests on Floor 11, for instance. This isn't super critical to note, but it is handy to know if you find something extremely valuable from a particular floor like a Berserker's Seal or Sorcerer's Mark.
-This system is broadly the same in Reload, but the item lists and cash yields are a bit more smoothed out and consistent compared to the roller coaster of prizes you'd get in FES and Portable. It's also obviously much less exploitable, since treasure no longer refreshes every time you return to the Tartarus lobby.
-Nothing much to say about the boss for this video really. It's pretty tee'd up for you and Koromaru to annihilate it with All-Out Attacks. I had to think a little harder about how I wanted to approach it in Portable, but I was able to come up with something just as good if a little poorly executed.
-I mistakenly think I want to reach just level 39 this moon cycle, I actually want to hit 40. The payoff for doing so is well worth the effort.
In Portable
-Ken gets Mediarama within a level of joining in this version, making him much easier to use from the jump and it gives him a distinct advantage over Yukari for a decent length of time. I won't be using him in Portable, but I'd highly recommend fielding him in this version if you aren't going for a gimmick team like I am.
-I don't have any particular level goal in mind for Portable at this point. Level 39 carries the same benefit it does in FES, but I can card Growth skills onto Eligor so it's not as critical for the access of Cool Breeze. I ultimately ended up reaching Level 38, which tempted me to continue to 39 but I decided to keep my levels a bit lower than FES to keep things interesting.
-Using a consistent party is a good strategy for FES and Portable, as level plays a perhaps too large role in damage dealt/received. Keeping a consistent lineup means everyone maintains a consistent performance in battle as you progress through the game.
-Take note of Mitsuru's HP and remember she's not wearing any HP boosting equipment. She's remarkably sturdy for a caster!
-Event floors are a mechanic that have come up sporadically but I haven't really dedicated much focus to them. I'll be going over these now for Portable since this version made some additions to the mechanic to make it a bit more interesting. When revisiting a floor you've already explored in Tartarus, there is a slight chance that it will be an Event floor, which can result in numerous things happening. In Portable, a new mechanic referred to as Accident-Prone Nights has been added. Specific nights in Portable will be Accident-Prone, resulting in a higher chance that event floors will occur. These are the same nights on the calendar every single playthrough, if you ever want to make use of them in a run. Event floors aren't too different from standard ones in layout, but they will have a specific effect in play that you have to work around. These effects have the secondary consequence of greatly reducing the amount of time it takes for the Reaper to show up, with him coming in about 1 minutes as opposed to the 5-10 you normally get (with two exceptions in Portable). The floor events you can get are as follows,
1.)No enemies present. This one is notable for actually creating non-standard floors. As opposed to the 2 chests floors in Tartarus usually have, enemy-free floors can have up to 8 or possibly more chests on them (though sometimes it'll be the standard amount). If it's a Payday floor, this is great! Of course, the Reaper shows up within a minute of you arriving on such a floor, so better be quick. These floors also always have an Access point, so you have two avenues to escape should it come to it. Skeedaddle from these if you get them on Garbage or Cheap Pharma floors, those items are certainly not worth the risk.
2.) Many enemies present. The exact opposite kind of floor! Like the name implies, the floor will be absolutely packed with enemies. These enemies have a unique trait: Double EXP! These floors can be fantastic for level grinding, but be wary: the Reaper shows up fast. These floors are likely to have Access Points, though I'm not sure if they are guaranteed. Certainly comes in handy if you absolutely need to jet from them though.
3.) Many Enemies, All Rare Forms. Like the name implies, this a variant of the Many Enemies floor where everything is a Rare Form Shadow. In FES, these are great ways for securing Nihil Weapons and getting the occasional Coin to sell. These work a bit differently in Portable. The Rare Forms on these floors in Portable will ALWAYS drop their Coin item instead of fusion materials. Additionally, they are the only types of Rare Forms that can trigger Shuffle Time. Shuffle Time off of these will have only Coin and Sword cards that are always cursed, docking even more time from the already reduced Repear timer. These cards tend to be a level or 2 higher than the average Shuffle Time you'd get for whatever section of Tartarus you are in though, so it might be worth the risk depending. I believe this is the last kind of event floor you can get in FES, though possibly the next one also can happen and I just have had bad luck with seeing it/don't remember it.
4.)Many Enemies, All Strong Shadows. Exactly what it says on the tin, nothing but flashing pink Shadows and absolute boatloads of them. These are THE floors to grind on in Portable if that's what you want to do. It's high risk, but the amount of Experience you can get with a Wand card from these floors is just outright stupid. Remember that the Wand cards have been buffed to 2.2X from level 1, so you get 4.4X the amount of EXP just from drawing that, on enemies that already give out extremely high EXP! I believe this is a Portable exclusive event floor, but I'm not 100% sure.
5.)Get more EXP from fighting. All events going forward are definitely Portable exclusive. I'm not sure if there is a mechanical equivalent to this in FES, and there's a reason I'm saying that. Regardless, these floors aren't quite as helpful as they might sound. Whatever the multiplier it applies is, it certainly isn't double like it is for the Many Enemy floors. I want to say maybe it's 50%, but it's possibly less than that. It's a nice boon when it happens, but it's not something I'd actively seek out. It does have one nice trait over Many Enemy floors that I'll cover in a bit though. Another note about this floor type and the rest going forward, to my knowledge they do not have a reduced Reaper Timer, or if they do it is much less pronounced than the other event floors we've covered so far.
6.)Get more items from enemies. Item drop rates for Shadows are doubled, making it much easier to get gems when fighting them. This exists in FES in a wildly different capacity: It's a buff you can get from the Inari Sushi and Naganaki Shrine that applies for your entire Tartarus exploration for the day you get it (it costs time to do this so don't get too excited). In Portable, it's now a Floor Event, creating a weird situation where it's less powerful but you're more likely to get use out of it. Anyways, if you're in a section of Tartarus where Shadows drop gems you care about, it's a good idea to get the most out of this when it happens. Onyx, Opals, Sapphires and Diamonds are high value gems to keep in mind when this pops up.
7.)Full View of The Floor. You enter the floor with your map already filled in! Nothing flashy, just a nice perk every now and again.
8.)Black Out Floor. FUCK these floors man. The area surrounding you is darkened, making it hard to see what lies ahead, and your map is disabled. These floors are super obnoxious, not helped by the fact they usually pull large layouts. It can be hell to find the Stairs on these floors, and the reduced vision only affects you. Shadows see you just fine. It really sucks to get these, and they are the biggest pain in the ass on accident prone nights.
Now for the first 4 on these list, there's one thing to keep in mind with them: Specific floor events regarding enemies are particular to specific regions of Tartarus. For instance, in Thebel, you will ONLY ever get No Enemy floors when an event happens. In the second half of Arqa, you will ONLY get Rare Form enemy floors when an event happens. This can be quite handy to know for the purposes of Farming and Grinding, so try to keep these things in mind. The latter 4 floor events in Portable can happen anyway, making this mechanic quite a bit more dynamic than it was in the PS2 versions.
-Reload sort of has a system like this, but it's not quite as fleshed out as it was originally, funnily enough. We've yet to see these replacement events yet, though I believe you can get floors with Only Strong Shadows at this point.
-I opt to hammer on the boss with my juiced up Ares physicals in this version. This leads into another point, I want to be mindful of which Personae produce skill cards with better physical skills as they come along. Since I have such a juiced up Physical attacker already, I may as well kit him out for attacking. Nata Taishi is the first one that I'd like to pick up for this purpose, he carries the card for Herculean Strike which is more than twice the base power of Gale Slash.
In Reload
-I clear out the Monad Doors of the previous section of Yabbashah offscreen to quickly get myself to Arcana Burst before beginning exploration proper. This is a nice and easy way to quickly secure Major Arcana like Justice and Chariot, so if you're cool with burning 10 minutes to hunt those down and utterly trouncing the Monad Bosses behind them, I'd recommend. It's also a good source of Gems and Fusion material!
-Ken and Koromaru have much better attacking options from the start in Reload, and many of the enemies here are weak to them. It's a good idea to bring them along.
-Ken outright starts with Mediarama here, making him a great healer right off the bat. Still, his SP runs dry quickly, and Yukari has Healing Apex now so be mindful of that if you leave her behind.
-We get Black Frost in this video, who is an AMAZING Persona. Maeiga and Dark Boost is awesome, and he's our first access to Tier 3 magic with Bufudyne and Agidyne. Get the correct boosts on him, and he deals some choice damage. It's honestly not hard to end up using him the entire game, a marked step up from his status in FES and Portable where he becomes available far too late to really be all that much help.
-With King Frost and Black Frost, we get access to the King and I Theurgy for the Protagonist! This Theurgy is fantastic, a highly damaging multi-target Ice skill. With Ice Boosts and Multi-Target Boost, this is one of the best damage dealing options the Protagonist will have for a long time. It is a tremendous step up from Jack Brothers, and allows the Protag to keep pace with our dominant physical fighters when it comes to damage, to say nothing of Black Frost's single target dominance at this stage.
-With Eligor, I have access to Life Aid AKA Cool Breeze now. This is the premier SP engine of Persona 3, but Eligor himself is not a great user of it. I'd recommend fusing him into something stronger, and then carding a full set of elemental magic onto it in order to have something that covers all weaknesses and refunds the SP used to hit them. Because I'm a dumbass, I don't think to do this until after the exploration is finished, which leads to numerous disasters in the next video.
-We get a good example of how Koromaru's Power Howling can completely bypass the conventional means for dealing with a boss. The extreme ramping it does to Junpei and Aigis' damage means that even having my buffs and debuffs contested didn't set me back too much.
I'll be working on the next Tartarus video later tonight, but until then I had another pseudo-update that's a sneak preview for a video that won't manifest for another 6-7 months. Once again, this is a clear of FES' bonus boss using a more conventional strategy with all the tools in place to make it relatively manageable. If you don't know who the boss is, and would like to keep it that way until the time comes, ignore this post. This time around the fight is commentated, and this will be the segment I open the video that covers all versions of the bonus boss+the Portable exclusive bonus boss with.
https://youtu.be/_ZcpAZTe6Ss
Despite this being a much more refined version of my previous clear of the fight with only one notable execution error, as you'd expect my luck goes out the window once I hit the record button and I get two false starts on the fight that get discarded due to random crits from the boss that I can't really account for. Sometimes I could avert disaster by playing a little more conservatively, but other times the boss will just wing you with multiple crits on the second turn they get. As long as that doesn't happen though, the set up I have more or less makes this fight just a matter of time. This is actually the first time ever I've had to use the Plume of Dusk, I didn't have it for the previous version of the fight and didn't even know how it worked when starting this recording. Having it did make me feel comfortable playing a bit more risky at points, I will admit.
https://youtu.be/_ZcpAZTe6Ss
Despite this being a much more refined version of my previous clear of the fight with only one notable execution error, as you'd expect my luck goes out the window once I hit the record button and I get two false starts on the fight that get discarded due to random crits from the boss that I can't really account for. Sometimes I could avert disaster by playing a little more conservatively, but other times the boss will just wing you with multiple crits on the second turn they get. As long as that doesn't happen though, the set up I have more or less makes this fight just a matter of time. This is actually the first time ever I've had to use the Plume of Dusk, I didn't have it for the previous version of the fight and didn't even know how it worked when starting this recording. Having it did make me feel comfortable playing a bit more risky at points, I will admit.
In other exciting news, I have officially completed Persona 3 FES 100% on my personal file!
Now that I don't have that to chip away at anymore while I ride my exercise bike, I may just go ahead and create a separate file for what we currently have with Portable and Reload and achieve the same there for the LP!
If I do go that route, it won't take nearly as long, a lot of the playtime from FES comes from how agonizingly slow the pace is in the game and the fact you can't fight the bonus boss unless you start a New Game + file.
Now that I don't have that to chip away at anymore while I ride my exercise bike, I may just go ahead and create a separate file for what we currently have with Portable and Reload and achieve the same there for the LP!
If I do go that route, it won't take nearly as long, a lot of the playtime from FES comes from how agonizingly slow the pace is in the game and the fact you can't fight the bonus boss unless you start a New Game + file.
Part 37 is out! We switch POVs to Reload predominantly and resume exploration of the final section of Yabbashah. I play this portion of Tartarus quite sloppy and have numerous boondoggles along the way. I've been casually playing The Answer in my free time which has both a wildly different upgraded pre-emptive strike that I also have the charge time upgrade for at the stage of the DLC I'm in, so the slow timing for The Journey's fairly different pre-emptive strike really throws me. This is also a good example of how playing wildly different versions of the same game can cause you to lose sight of effective strategies specific to one version. I really should have fused off Eligor into something new and customized it with cards to have all elements covered (which I did do after recording this), but I was so locked into exploration mode that I just didn't consider this as I went and was running a fairly sub-optimal team that struggled with SP management. Fortunately, once I can get some new gear from the Antique Store, I can start kitting everyone out with better things to enhance our general combat performance! One thing I'd like to say before I get to my general musings, it will be a little bit before I get the next update out. I'll be taking a vacation to visit family starting this Friday, and will be absent my PS2 and PC until March 2nd, so I can't get any recording done during that timeframe. It'll be my top priority to resume once I come back fully recharged! I will have my laptop with me and there have been a couple things I've been meaning to write up, so I might still push out a supplemental post or two.
Extra Notes
In FES and Portable
-We don't see too much of these here, so I'll roll them into one because for once they're pretty similar in what I do. Natural Dancer is a nightmare if you don't know what's coming, and practically unloseable if you do. With a Wind Immune Persona and a Narcissus Flower, it literally can't do anything to the Protag so you could just whittle it down solo if you so choose. Seiryuu Is a good pick for this fight for this very reason, but Nata Taishi is also serviceable.
-One FES specific thing, the AI really hates Tetrakarn and this is the first time that might really be an issue. They will not ever trigger a repel, and will outright refuse to act if that's the only thing they possibly could do. The Rush command is valuable for circumventing this, as it always forces them to launch a physical attack. Almost adds an element of Real Time Strategy to the game, albeit a very silly kind. It's also handy to know if you send Aigis into Orgia Mode in Portable, since she reverts to the standard AI control in that situation.
-To reiterate, my big goals for Persona pick ups are Nandi, Nata Taishi and Cu Chulainn who are all valuable for different reasons. I get all of these in FES, but I settle for Nata Taishi in Portable since it allows me to avoid extra grinding. I would really like to get Nata Taishi to the point where he pops out that Herculean Strike card because it would push Ares over the top. An easy way to do that would be to just fuse him again when I max out the Chariot social link, but it may be more practical to card the Growth 3 skill onto him. In a bit of fortune, I did get enough Opals from the expedition to afford that card, though there isn't enough time before the Full Moon to dupe it, so I'd have to be sure Nata Taishi is my set Persona for the boss kill if I want to take advantage of the big EXP yield I can get there.
-Since Portable otherwise had nothing to show but the boss, I show off some miscellaneous things I haven't had a chance to mention yet/forgot. FES added some music tracks you can swap out the Tartarus BGM for, and Portable actually tells you the name of these tracks if you'd like to look up their original versions later. Portable allows you to cancel Shuffle Times, which can actually be handy for speeding up Gem farming as well as avoiding having your inventory cluttered with early game crap. Frustratingly, Reload doesn't retain this and it can actually force you into picking undesirable cards if you have the Justice Major Arcana in effect (such as being forced to take the completely useless Temperance card). Finally, I wanted to acknowledge the Compendiums biographies for the various Personae you fuse. Many different MegaTen games feature something like this, and it's fun to read the origins of the featured demons/Personae and how that informs their appearance in game.
In Reload
-With Healing Apex in tow, Yukari is phenomenal for exploration now. She effectively keeps the party topped off for free, allowing you to just hit Auto-Heal after every battle to cure off injuries or incidental HP lose due to using Physical Skills. She's great to have around if your general battle strategy is having Junpei and Aigis spam multi-target moves.
-Once you get Life Aid on something, I highly recommend fusing the skill around and creating ways to keep it in effect while maintaining good coverage. I neglect to do this, and my general battle flow suffers for it.
-We've finally hit the point where even with a AG boosting accessory, pretty much everyone on the team is becoming faster than the Protag and he's usually dead last in the turn order. This can make SP engines quite frustrating to use, as its preferable to have the MC go first in order to check every possible weakness first thing. If he's last and your All Out Attack doesn't kill the opposition, that means you have no choice but to eat some incoming damage. Sadly there's not really a great way to address this short of shoring up on as much AG boosting equipment as possible, which is easier said than done.
-We've hit the point where most Tartarus bosses are a simple matter of entering with Theurgies at the ready, upping your buffs, and then letting loose. Power Howling allows me to skirt the intended flow of most battles, which is why I made a pointed decision to not use Koromaru for the Monad Passage.
-Speaking of, if you're risk averse it's much smarter in the Monad Passage fights to just turtle up and guard constantly while you slowly take note of what kind of attack each dice result sends your way. I was confident I could win without doing this (we'll pretend like that was the reason, and not that I just didn't think of it at the time), so I instead just bulldozed through with the Teen Girl Squad.
-If you hadn't when entering Tartarus, I'd recommend going back to the first half of Yabbashah at this point and clearing out all the Monad Doors there. They are a nice and easy source of extra Black Quartz and Onyx, which are super important gems for equipment trading.
Supplemental: Social Links, or Friends With Statistical Benefits
This is a post I've been meaning to write for awhile but we've only just recently seen the full extent of ways we can game this system, so I held off a bit. I'll be updating the post in pieces and as we unlock new links, since obviously I'd rather not spoil anything before it has a chance to come up (and in the former case this means I'm not writing a whole bunch at once.)
Social Links are the backbone of Persona 3's streamlined social simulator gameplay. A number of interpersonal connections as well as some story segments cause the formation of Social Links, gamifying the concept of friendship and assigning a numerical rank to how close you are to people. Beyond providing a wealth of extra detail to the secondary cast of Persona and maybe helping your protagonist learn some things about life, Social Links also provide power in the form of fusion bonuses. Each link represents an Arcana, and each Persona underneath that Arcana will gain additional experience when fused. Naturally, Personae that are fused and have high level social links backing them have much more power out of the starting gate than anything you could hope to find from Shuffle Time. The bonus EXP is as follows,
Rank 1: 1 Level Up
Rank 3: 2 Level Ups
Rank 5: 3 Level Ups
Rank 8: 4 Level Ups
Rank 10 (Or Rank MAX): 5 Level Ups
Aside from the gap from level 5 to 8, every 2 social link ranks from Rank 1 yields another Level Up for a fused Persona of a given Arcana. In P3 Vanilla and FES, fused Personae actually gain the full amount of Experience displayed for the fusion performed and can end off much closer to a level up for it, making the in-between ranks have mechanical benefit. For some reason starting with Persona 4 and back ported in Portable and Reload, any EXP gained in excess of the last level up a Persona gets from their fusion bonus is just lost, though Reload introduces the Lovers major Arcana card (grants extra EXP from Social Link bonuses when performing fusions) that can actually get some value out of this normally lost EXP at least. Perhaps it goes without saying but just so it's clear, Personae fused without a Social Link established for their Arcana gain no bonus EXP from fusion, though they still inherit skills at least. Naturally, this makes Personae of certain Arcana undesirable to use as not every Social Link is established within the timeframe you can expect to be able to actually these Personae. One final benefit of Social Links is that when a Link is maxed out, it unlocks a new Persona for fusion. These Max Rank Personae are among the best in the game, and are well worth a look if you qualify for creating them.
So we know the benefits of Social Links now, but what actually are they? Like I said, they are a gamified reflection of your bonds with others, and are established through a variety of means. Social Links will form the bulk of your daytime activity in Persona 3 (and some nighttime activity), with almost any day where you are given the choice on what to do being dedicated to them. Every Arcana in the game save for 2 has a specific representative for it, and you can dedicate your limited time slots to hanging out with said representative and hopefully obtain a rank up for their Social Link. Social Links come in 4 flavors.
Automatic: Automatic Social Links are ones that are established purely through plot progression. No conscious effort is required on the player's part to advance these, merely getting through the game will cause Automatic links to go up. Naturally, this is the rarest type of link, with only 3 of this type existing in Persona 3. The Fool Social Link is an example of an Automatic Link. Another notable thing about Automatic links is that they occasionally skip levels, such as the Death Social Link going from Rank 1 to Rank 3 when it first levels up.
Semi-Automatic: Semi-Automatic links are ones that you do have to initiate on your own time (and often they have social stat checks you need to pass to initiate them), but do not require any particular special care taken to complete them beyond that. When you engage in a Semi-Automatic link, it will always Rank Up regardless of anything. The Devil Social Link is an example of a Semi-Automatic link.
Streamlined: Streamlined links are ones that do require specific actions from the player to advance as fast as possible, but if said actions are taken then the link will complete either within 10 social link events or very close to 10 social link events. Emperor in FES and Portable is a very good example of a streamlined link: If you have a Persona of the same Arcana in your stock for every Social Link event and always pick the correct dialogue choices, the Emperor social link will complete in 10 social link events like a Semi-Automatic link would. There are a handful of links that can manage this kind of progression in FES, though for the most part the archetypical Streamlined link will be something like Hierophant or Hanged Man, an out of school link that requires 2-4 additional time slots dedicated to it to complete. Portable and Reload, due to mechanical changes, have the vast majority of their links qualify as Streamlined ones, for different reasons.
Standard: Standard links are the ones you'll most likely want a guide for. Simply picking the right options and having a matching Persona is not enough for Standard links, you will hit roadblocks that can take multiple timeslots from your very limited calendar time if the only way you are choosing to progress these is by hanging out with their representative like normal. The Justice Social Link is a good example of a Standard link: towards the back half of it we will find low point yields from the correct dialogue choices against high point requirements for the next rank up, and we'll want to look for additional means of getting extra points into the link.
So now we know what kind of Links we can see, but what's the actual progression for a Social Link? As you progress through the game, you'll be notified of the existence of a potential Social Link through a variety of means. Some Links will be forced on you by the game, sometimes pre-existing bonds lead to the formation of new ones as people you are Social Linking with will give you leads on other potential people to hang out with, and sometimes you'll just talk to a major character after a story event and find them ready to Social Link with you now. Once a Link is formed, the representative of the Link will be available to hang out with, each rep having specific days they can be interacted with for Social Link purposes. If hang out with them when they have enough Social Link Points, the hang out will be a Rank Up event, advancing the Social Link to its next story beat and enhancing the effects it has on Persona Fusions.
I've mentioned Points a few times now, what's that about? Every Social Link has a "Score" tied to it that determines whether or note a hang out is a rank up event, and this score is always reset to zero when you trigger a rank up event. When participating in the rank up event, you'll be faced with dialogue choices. Certain choices yield Social Link Points, with "better" choices giving you more points. If the points gained from picking the right choices matches or exceeds the Score needed to get a rank up, then the next time you engage in a Social Link event with someone, it will be a rank up event again. If you didn't get enough points, and there will be times where you won't get enough points no matter what, additional actions will need to be taken to get the next rank up event. Usually, this is done by just hanging out with someone normally and getting a generic event that has no dialogue choices and instead awards a set amount of points depending on if you have a matching Arcana Persona or not (more on that below). There will be plenty of times in FES and Portable where you do this, but it has limitations: namely that it can only be done on a Social Link reps normal schedule and sometimes it still isn't enough to secure the points for a rank up event. Luckily, there are other means to get more points for our Social Links.
The first and biggest one, as I've mentioned repeatedly: Having a Persona that matches the Arcana of a Social Link rep in your stock grants a bonus to points gained from social link events. Specifically, it awards a 51% bonus to any point increase you get, with the result rounded down in the case of a decimal. Portable specifically also adds a new function to the Charm social stat: When Charm is maxed out in Portable it will also provide a 51% bonus to all point gains, which stacks with the matching Arcana bonus. Now for any Streamlined link, these bonuses on their own are enough to either guarantee rank ups, or at least ensure that you only need to devote one extra timeslot to a Social Link to get that next rank up. For Standard links though, it pays to know the full extent of ways you can get points outside of rank up events. Now when you participate in a Social Link event but it isn't a rank up event, you will get +10 points if you don't have matching Arcana Persona, +15 points if you do/have Max Charm in Portable, and in Portable specifically you can get +22 points with a matching Persona AND Max Charm. There are a litany of other events that yield this same point bonus, and they include:
Drawing a Relationship Fortune at Naganaki Shrine
Meeting a Social Link character when going on a Walk with Koromaru (Note that in FES and Portable, SEES members who are also Social Links never get this bonus)
Attending the Summer Film Festival with a Social Link rep
Accepting a date invitation from a nighttime/holiday phone call (This one does not exist in Reload)
The first one is probably the main way you'll be getting bonuses outside of a character's normal schedule in FES, the second and third are very situational but are also located at consistent points on the calendar so it's not too hard to route them in once you know about them, and the last is special. In addition to the points you get from accepting a phone invitation, the date itself is excellent for gaining points. When accepting a phone invitation, the next day you have off from school will automatically be a date with the person who invited you (usually this will be Sunday, but there are some holidays that you can get date invitations for). The date event will present you with a dialogue choice, much like a rank up event, and picking the right choice yields a +30/+45 point bonus! Additionally, dates with your female classmates will prompt you the option to give a gift (In Portable, this was changed so that you can give gifts to Men and Women when playing as the FemC). Giving a gift a girl likes is +10/+15, while giving a gift she loves is a staggering +50/+75! Now there were a couple times in Persona 3 Vanilla where the latter was necessary, but there is no link in FES and Portable where the points from just giving the right answer isn't enough. With some good scheduling, it is possible to get the points to rank up from accepting a phone invitation, get that rank up event, and the use the ensuing date when it comes up to get the next bunch of points you need to get the next rank up! This does come up a few times in FES, so don't neglect this avenue for Social Links! In Reload on the other hand, dates are essentially pointless as the general point requirements for every rank up event have been reduced heavily, resulting in most links qualifying as streamlined ones.
As for some final miscellaneous points before we get onto the links themselves. Any points gained in excess of the amount required for a rank up are useless since the score resets to zero when you finally trigger a rank up event. Say we have a link that has two rank up events in a row that require 30 Social Link points. Going into the first rank up event with 60 points in tow does not mean we will automatically get the succeeding rank up event. This behooves you to initiate rank up events as soon as you qualify for them. Thankfully, there are different ways you can gleam this information: in FES a character that is ready to rank up will approach you during lunch time at school on a day where they can engage in a social link event (this does not apply for out of school links, but those are baseline Streamlined links with oodles of free time to approach them, so it hardly matters). In Portable and Reload, the game will simply tell you if the character is ready for a rank up when you talk to them ("You feel your relationship will become stronger soon..."). Is it possible to lose Social Link points? No, but you can gain them slowly or damage your relationships. Picking the "wrong" dialogue choices in rank up events obviously yields less-to-no points, and occasionally you'll come across what I call "land mines" that will cause your Social Link to reverse if you pick them. A reversed Link provides no fusion bonus when creating a Persona of the affected Arcana, and you either need to draw a relationship fortune to fix it or participate in a Social Link event where you try to smooth things over with the person you upset. Most of these land mines are obvious, but there is one infamous one in Vanilla/FES that tons of people have tripped over. Speaking of Links reversing, FES exudes a bit of extra pressure here. Our in-school social links (e.g. Kenji, Kaz) have a 90-day limit to interact with them. This can be participating in normal Social Link events or even just drawing a relationship fortune, but if there is no activity on a social link within 90 days, the link will reverse. That's just for links with Male classmates though, for Female classmates this limit is 60 days. Additionally, the MC's social links with female class mates in Vanilla, FES and Portable automatically become romantic and introduce a Jealousy mechanic. Once a link becomes romantic, engaging in a Social Link event with another Female classmate reduces this count by 15 days, making it very precarious to juggle multiple Social Links with Female classmates at the same time. I'm not sure if Social Links that take place outside of school fall under this mechanic for Reversals, but you're given designated weeks where these are the only Links you can pursue every other month so it hardly matters if they do. For one final reversal related mechanic, double-booking for a date on a day off will result in an automatic reversal for whoever you decide to stand up. Naturally, if you've already planned a date, do not accept another one should you receive a call. It's worth noting at this point that maxed out social links are unbreakable, and cannot reverse once established. This can lead to a funny situation where you can accept multiple phone dates for the points it gives, max out one of the Social Links in the interim until the day of the date, and then stand up the person you maxed out with no fear of the link reversing.
Phew! Now to go over the specific Social Links, how we establish them, their schedules, and what Personae they affect. Some Arcana are easier to advance than others and some are tied to simply better Personae, so this information can be handy to know if you have a purely practical approach to this game!
The Fool
Fittingly for the card representing the journey's beginning, The Fool is our first Social Link. It's also a non-indicative one for the system as a whole, as it is an Automatic Link with no specific representative. Instead, The Fool represents the bond between SEES as a whole. A cute little detail is that as you gain new members for SEES, their names will populate the list for who this Link represents when you check it in the Social Link menu. Like said previously, The Fool is an Automatic Link the increases when you pass by certain days on the calendar. Once established, it usually increases in response to defeating a Full Moon Shadow, but there are some outliers to this. The dates this link increases are,
Establishes at Rank 1 on 4/20 (Blaze It)
4/21
5/9
7/7
7/22
11/2
11/4
11/28 (Skips Rank 8 and goes to 9)
12/31 (Only if you choose to fight on)
In addition to the usual fusion bonuses a Social Link provides, the early rank ups for this link vaguely coincide with mechanical upgrades, stopping at Rank 5 for additional goodies. In FES, Rank 3 coincides with learning the Knock Down Tactic, Rank 4 coincides with learning the Full Assault Tactic and Rank 5... doesn't coincide with anything but it's the last rank you get before learning the Same Target tactic from beating Chariot and Justice. The Conserve SP Tactic just goes unrepresented. In Portable, Rank 3 coincides with gaining the Co-Op attack mechanic, while Rank 5 unlocks the diving save mechanic. Contrary to what you might read in some places, the ability to endure fatal blows is NOT tied to this link, that's a separate upgrade. Reload, rather disappointingly, does not have any extra mechanical benefits associated with this link.
You probably noticed right away that this link gets to Rank 5 relatively quickly and the stagnates for a long ass time. For a fairly long stretch of the game, Personae under this Arcana will only gain 3 levels off of fusion, I suppose a fair trade for the automatic nature of the link. Are there any worthwhile Personae under this Arcana? Well for FES and Portable,
FES/Portable Fool Personae
Orpheus: Level 1
Slime: Level 12
Legion: Level 22
Black Frost: Level 34 (Special Fusion)
Ose: Level 44
Decarabia: Level 50
Loki: Level 58
Susano-o: Level 76 (Special Fusion, unlocked at Max Rank)
Note there is one more Fool Persona that was added in FES and retained for all future versions of the game, but he is special and will be covered at specific point down the line.
Fool Personae can only be created via Triangle Spread or Special Fusions in FES and Portable, so you won't actually end up seeing them all that often when fusing junk off. Are any of them worth it? Ehhh. Fool Personae have the unique trait of having the Universal inheritance type (with the notable exception of Orpheus, who is a Fire Inheritance type), meaning there is no limitation on what skills they can get from fusion and they do not favor any particular skill when it comes to probability of inheriting them. This makes Fool Personae fairly customizable, but that also entails grappling with Persona 3's awful fusion inheritance system, which I'd rather chew glass than spend a ton of time on. Fool Personae as of FES are more notable for their use as weapon fusion material, as they create 1 Attack Power 99 Accuracy weapons with unique effects. I go over the full extent of these in the Antique Shop post, but notable ones include Legion providing +100 HP and Black Frost providing +10 MA. Beyond that, none of them jump out and say "I'm Awesome!" and most of them are unremarkable generalists with no interesting skills picked up to potentially fuse into other things. Decarabia is required for the Best Friends fusion spell, but that spell is very situational and I only know of one fight where it is extremely good. Things are a bit different in Reload,
Reload Fool Personae
Orpheus: Level 1
Slime: Level 12
Legion: Level 26
Black Frost: Level 37 (Special Fusion)
Ose: Level 41
Decarabia: Level 54
Loki: Level 69
Susano-o: Level 77 (Special Fusion, Unlocked at Max Rank)
Triangle Spreads are gone, so you're much more likely to stumble upon these guys by happenstance, and there are some pretty notable picks here! The Arcana is pretty low-key (no pun intended) until you can create Black Frost who is now creatable as soon as you reach his level. In addition to enabling the ever useful King and I Theurgy, Black Frost is a phenomenal Persona that picks up our first Tier 3 magic in Bufudyne and Agidyne. He also picks up useful passives like Fast Heal and Dark Boost, on top of having excellent resistances and picking up Resist Light to patch out his only weakness.. Customization is also much easier in Reload since you can now pick what skills you get directly, so that Universal inheritance type means that Black Frost and most any Fool Persona are now very easy to kit through a mixture of smart fusions and skill cards. Ose also has had the extremely useful Life Aid passive added to his skill list, making him a great way to access that skill and pass it around if you haven't built up an Eligor. Ose also has the fringe perk of being an excellent Slash attacker, so there's extra incentive there to create him. The final notable Persona is Loki, who in addition to coming with the 4 -dyne spells, picks up the Spell Master passive that halves SP costs. Loki also has helpful passives like Single Target Boost and Soul Shift, making him pretty great for general exploration purposes! All in all, a pretty solid Arcana considering you don't need to take any special care with its Link.
The Magician
Our first "real" social link, and one that is also hoisted upon us automatically in all versions of the game, albeit at very slightly different times. (4/22 in all versions except for Portable where it starts on 4/23) As you'd expect from an early game link, the Magician lowballs it by being a Streamlined link that only requires one additional Social Link event to Max out, and said Event can be done in a way that doesn't lose any time. You will need a matching Persona and the correct answers most of the time, as you'd expect of any link, but you'd have to make a mistake to lose any calendar time to this link in FES and Reload. Before going forward, let me lay out how I'll represent the progression for each Link. For FES, the progression will look like this,
Initial | 1(22) | 15(28) | etc.
The first rank of every Social Link does not have any dialogue choices for you to select, nor are you expected to gain any points to get Rank 2. Starting from Rank 2, you will need to be selecting the correct choices to advance the link in the minimum amount of time required. The first number is the point requirement for the succeeding Rank Up event, while the parenthetical number is the maximum amount possible from the Rank Up event itself. I will always be using the numbers that assume you have the matching Persona, so be sure to keep that in mind! Note that all Rank 2 events either require 1 or no points to get to the next Rank Up event, so every Social Link is pretty casual for scheduling starting out.
For Portable, this format will largely be the same with one distinction,
Initial | 1(22/33) | 15(28/36) | etc.
The second parenthetical number represents the maximum points possible if you have a matching Persona AND maxed out Charm. The second number doesn't really matter until around July where you have your first realistic chance to have maxed the stat, but it's good to keep in mind from that point on. Pretty much any Streamlined link can also be completed in the minimum with just one of these bonuses, so it takes some of the stress off of needing to have specific Personae all the time for Social Linking.
Now for Reload, I don't have any resources that actually tell me the numbers involved for Social Link progression beyond the numerical Ranks of each Rank Up event. So instead, I'll be representing the progression like this,
Initial | O | O | X | O | etc.
An O means that all the points to get to the succeeding Rank Up event can be gotten from Rank Up dialogue choices you are currently on. X means that the dialogue choices alone won't get you to where you need to be, and more will need to be done in order to get a Rank Up the next time you participate in a Social Link event. A bit inelegant, but rarely will this require more than a matching Persona and a relationship fortune in Reload as all Links progress way faster in this version. With that out of the way,
Kenji Tomochika represents the Magician Social Link for the Male Character, and in FES & Reload he will invite you to hang out on 4/22, automatically initiating this link for you. Kenji is available to Social Link with on Tues., Thurs. and Fri. assuming school is in session and an exam isn't coming up within a week. His Rank Up progression is as follows,
Initial | 1(14) | 15(29 | 15(22) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 22(21) | 22(29) | 22(22)| Max
Initial | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | Max
Kenji proves to be a very basic fellow, and this is hammered in with his Link progression. Only in FES do you have to sacrifice one extra timeslot to max him out at Rank 7, and that is easily accomplished at no real time loss by simply going to Film Festival with him during the Summer. In Reload, that is unnecessary and Kenji is a true Streamlined link that just requires the right dialogue options with a matching Persona. Fittingly with how easy it is to max this Link out, the Magician Arcana governs a bunch of useful early game Personae, giving mechanical incentive to hang out with Kenji if you're just looking to be pragmatic. Things are a little different in Portable though, as the FemC wants nothing to do with Kenji. Instead,
Junpei Iori represents the Magician Social Link for the FemC in Persona 3 Portable. In an effort to give more characterization to the Male members of SEES, all of them have claimed a different Arcana to represent as a Social Link for the FemC, although amusingly not all of them have been given Arcana that matches the Arcana of their Persona. Junpei is not one of those outliers though, instead bucking convention by having a decidedly more complex Link than Kenji. Junpei will automatically spring his initiation event on you on 4/23, and is available to Social Link with on Tues. and Thurs., a slightly narrower timeframe than Kenji that proves to be more limited than you'd think due to Junpei's progression.
Initial | 0(37/56) | 0(66/101) | 30(14/22) | 30(22/34) | 35(22/34) | 35(66/101) | 40(66/101) | 40(37/56) | Max
As you can see, Junpei starts out fairly undemanding, but rapidly hits you with back to back Rank Ups that necessitate additional time slots dedicated to him in order to keep things going. It's important to note that only on New Game + do we have the possibility of getting that Max Charm bonus for Rank 4, so that one actually requires either two social link events or two relationship fortunes to clear the points required for Rank 5 to happen! Fortunately things smooth out a bit after that, and by Rank 9 you should have the maximum Charm required to get the necessary points for Maxing out. Because Junpei is only available two days of the week to hang out with, he'll be common early recipient for Relationship Fortunes. Serendipitously, due to the Hermit link now being a School Link, the FemC has very little to do on Sundays and Holidays starting out, so these are easy time slots to spend on Junpei. This is an early indicator of the general trend for SEES Social Links in Portable: Since several links have been swapped out entirely or moved to a Night time slot, the remaining daytime links generally demand more of you to advance them. All that being said though, Junpei isn't too difficult to Max out relative to Kenji, and because of the more limited options the FemC has to spend her daytime, he'll probably Max out even faster than Kenji like he has already in the LP proper.
As stated previously, Magician is the archetypical Early Game Arcana. Many of the Personae feature within find themselves within pre-defined niches and make great fusion fodder for creating future specialists down the line, should you be willing to farm the assets needed to pull them from the compendium. In FES and Portable, our prospects for the Arcana are,
Nekomata: Level 5
Jack Frost: Level 8
Pyro Jack: Level 14
Hua Po (Special Persona, must complete an Elizabeth Date to fuse): Level 20
Sati: Level 28
Orobas: Level 34
Rangda: Level 40
Surt: Level 52 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Unlike Fool, and like many Arcana available in the Early Game, Magician has no Special Fusions. Magician Personae have very straightforward and obvious uses: several of them unlock the Elemental Boost Passives. Jack Frost carries Ice Boost, and at an incredibly early point for the stage of the game he is creatable. Hua Po carries Fire Boost, and Orobas, while a bit late in comparison, is also an easy way to access Wind Boost. Aside from Orobas and Jack Frost, most Magician Personae are Fire based, so they are the premier Fire Casters for a good chunk of the game, especially if you do Triangle Spread upgrades with them. In particular, Sati makes a good mid-game source of Fire damage due to her innate Agilao and Maragi. The real centerpiece of Magician, though, is Surt. Surt makes putting up with Kenji entirely worth it, and makes Junpei even more of a GOAT than he already is. Surt is absolutely cracked, coming in with innate Fire Boost, learning Fire Amp, Maragidyne, and he also is the only Persona that learns the Tier 4 Fire spell Ragnarok. Surt is a must-have for maximizing Fire damage, and due to the Arcade Games and Stat Cards that exist in FES/Portable, he is inarguably the best Fire Persona in the game. In both of these games, you have ample time to cap out his MA stat, and since he comes with everything a Fire caster could care about by default, there is no reason to fuse past him in The Journey. Now over in Reload,
Nekomata: Level 3
Jack Frost: Level 8
Jack 'o Lantern: Level 15
Hua Po (Special Persona, must complete an Elizabeth Date to fuse): Level 19
Sati: Level 29
Orobas: Level 39
Rangda: Level 50
Surt: Level 60
Futsunushi: Level 74 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Reload made an effort to make the various Arcana less obviously tiered relative to each other, so most have either picked up a new Ultimate Persona or have had their general levels raised up a bit. Both in Magician's case. Despite this, due to the expedited Level curve of Reload, most of these Personae serve the same function they do in FES and Portable. Surt is no longer the end all-be all for Fire casters since he longer has innate Fire Boost, and the retooled Incense system paired with extra Night activities means it's less practical to just max him out and call it a day. He does still have exclusive Level up access to Inferno (formerly Ragnarok), so he's worth creating to fuse that around but it's safe to say his best days are behind him. Futsunushi goes against the grain of the Magician Arcana by instead being a Slash specialist. The most notable thing about him is that he picks up the Unshaken Will passive at Level 81, a passive that makes you immune to all ailments save for Poison, Freeze, Shock, Down and DIzzy, and was previously found only on Sun Asura. This is something to consider, though the only thing you want that passive for is a bonus boss that requires capped out levels anyway. For conventional purposes, there is an accessory that just makes you immune to all ailments and can simply be purchased.
The [High]Priestess
Everyone's favorite captain of the obvious, Fuuka Yamagishi, is the representative for the [High]Priestess Social Link in all 3 versions of the game. While Fuuka is not the first possible romantic partner for the MC you'll encounter, she's the first one we'll be covering so she's a good object example of the general progression for these links. Note that while she's not explicitly a romantic option for the FemC, all shared Social Links with female SEES members follow pretty similar scripts to the MC's and tend to be pretty thick in Sapphic vibes due to this. It's a shame they didn't commit to that.
For being the first female SEES member you can establish a Social Link with, Fuuka has a remarkably complicated set of unlock requirements. Obviously she needs to have entered the story and joined SEES. At that point, not long after you'll be prompted to join a Culture Club. Pick the one you want to tumble 4, and Fuuka will just happen to be a member of the same club. At that point, she will be available to converse with on the second floor hallway of school every Monday, Friday and Saturday. If you have maxed out your Courage stat, you will be able to initiate Fuuka's Social Link and progress it on the previously mentioned days. The earliest all of these can be fulfilled is 6/19, which is the deadline to max out Courage if you want to start Fuuka's Link right away. It's not too difficult to accomplish if you know what you're doing, but it can be easy to fail this if you don't know the best ways to maximize courage. For Portable, this is actually way simpler. Fuuka will want to form her own club on 6/15, and you only need Rank 2 Courage to agree to her proposal. Onto progression!
Initial | 1(22) | 15(22) | 22(22) | 30(29) | 30(22) | 0(35) | 40(29) | 0(55) | Max
As you can see, once Rank 5 is reached, there is not a single event where we can get the points we need for the next Rank Up just from the event dialogues alone. Rank 9 in particular affords you know points, putting Fuuka in the unique spot where even a successful date will not get us a rank up and we'll need to supply her with a gift she likes to get that little bit of extra. Pretty much all Romantic social links follow this progression, and if you are just pursing them via the regularly available Social Link events, they will burn way too much time. It would take 4 hang outs or 4 Relationship Fortunes to get from Rank 9 to Max, even with a matching Persona! Now for Portable,
Initial | 0(15/22) | 15(37/56) | 22(30/44) | 22(37/56) | 30(22/34) | 30(22/33) | 35(0/0) | 40(22/34) | Max
Much easier to progress, particularly because by the time we'll reach her we will also be adding in the max Charm Bonus to our point gains. In fact, that combo nearly makes the Social Link a streamlined one right up until the end where we get some major point gates with a lack of dialogue choices to blow past them. Past that, Fuuka's cooking club also supplies us with gifts in the form of the treats we bake with her. These can be handy for bypassing other point gates in other links should you go on dates with them, or even help you bypass Fuuka's own point requirements if you route it right. For Reload,
Initial | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | X(?) | X | X | Max
For Rank 8, I'm not actually sure if there's a point gate or not, but there will be a huge lull in activity for Fuuka's Social Link as a new mechanic introduced in Reload makes it ideal to save the back half of Social Links with female SEES members for the end of the game. Due to more generous point yields (or maybe just lower requirements) for Social Links in Reload, Streamlined is the new standard and any means of ekeing out extra Social Link points is usually enough to clear any point gates you may come across if you're picking all the right answers.
The [High]Priestess Arcana is another archetypical early game Arcana, though not one I think is quite as good as Magician. Priestess Personae mostly focus on Ice and Healing Magic, with some outliers such as Unicorn and the FES/Portable version of Kikuri-Hime. Speaking of the FES/Portable Priestess list,
Apsaras: Level 3
Unicorn: Level 11
High Pixie: Level 21
Sarasvati: Level 27
Ganga: Level 35
Parvati: Level 47
Kikuri-Hime: Level 53
Scathach (Unlocked at Max Rank): Level 64
Early game, Apsaras is half the extremely useful Cadenza spell, so if you're like me you'll often have her in the back pocket for casting that spell in FES. Unicorn is one of your earlier means of using Hama skills, but early Hama skills are too inconsistent to care about. Past that, the next most notable Persona is Sarasvati, who learns both Bufula and Ice Boost. With a Max rank for the Priestess link, you can do a triangle spread with High Pixie and Ganga to create a Parvati who will also gain Bufudyne off the level ups. Parvati is a solid ice caster for most of the rest of the game, and does form one half an interesting fusion spell, though she doesn't pick up Ice Amp so you may need to fuse her up if you don't want to commit to Varuna Bracers. Kikuri-Hime is another means to access Cool Breeze, though she's far from the best due to how relatively late she is picked up, and she's uncharacteristically a Fire casting Priestess at a point where you already have access to the broken Surt. Scathach is very whatever, no special skills I care about and an unfocused skill set that picks up Myriad Arrows, Mabufudyne and Magarudyne. Overall, not an Arcana that has anything I think is amazing, though Parvati has potential. For Reload,
Apsaras: Level 2
Unicorn: Level 11
High Pixie: Level 20
Sarasvati: Level 32
Ganga: Level 41
Parvati: Level 48 (Special Fusion)
Kikuri-Hime: Level 61
Scathach: Level 75
Reload shifts the focus of the Priestess Arcana much harder towards healing, with many of its reps now picking up multi-targeting healing skills when they previously didn't. Sarasvati is among your earliest options for accessing the extremely useful Mediarama spell, and it is well worth your time to make her. Kikuri-Hime is now an Ice caster and also picks up Mediarahan, making her also a pretty good pick up once you reach the necessary level. Other than that, the Arcana is actually pretty similar to how it was originally. Scathach is once again a weird generalist with no particularly interesting skills. It is worth noting that customizing any Persona you want to be an unbeatable tank of death is much easier in Reload due to the retooled skill card system and the much easier to use inheritance system, but I do place some value on Personae who don't take much work to be made awesome. It's hard to justify advocating something like, I dunno Ganga, when Black Frost is right there.
The Emperor
In all versions of Persona 3, The Emperor is represented by Hidetoshi Odagiri and is associated with Gekkoukan's student council. This is the first "club" link we'll be covering in Arcana order, though the first actual club link you can initiate is Chariot. Odagiri is somewhat unique in that though he is a school related link and follows the normal calendar restrictions those have, his association with the protagonist is largely professional and your only option to earn points for his link outside of Rank Up events is relationship fortunes (Okay Reload has a second option, but it's available very late in the game). Mitsuru will approach you on 4/27 and give you the option to up your membership for the student council, though you can put it off for awhile if you want to work on other links that are available at the time. The student council meets on Mon, Weds, Fri and Sat(except in Portable where Saturday is dropped). Odagiri is also sort of the platonic ideal of a streamlined link, as in all versions except for Vanilla and one rank in Portable, having a matching Persona and picking the correct answer will let you complete the link in 10 interactions. From FES to Reload, the Rank up requirements are,
Initial | 1(22) | 1(7) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 22(22) | 22(22) | Max
Initial | 1(22/34) | 1(7/11) | 15(22/34) | 15(22/34) | 15(7/11) | 15(22/34) | 22(22/34) | 22(22/34) | Max
Initial | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | Max
As you can see, Odagiri is pretty easy to max out due to his frequent availability and low requirements. He does need an Oracle burned on him for 1 day in Portable, but the FemC has almost nothing to do on Sunday's until the Sun Social Link enters the picture so that's not really a big deal. For the most part, I don't plan to cover Vanilla progression for these write ups since Vanilla is not the main focus of this LP, but I do want to cover interesting niche cases, and Odagiri is definitely one of them. In Vanilla, his progression is a lot more obnoxious.
Initial | 1(22) | 10(0) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | Max
Remember that without a matching Persona, those 22's are actually 15's and that the point bonus you get for attending a non-rank up social link event without a matching Persona is 10. Also note that Relationship Fortunes don't exist in Vanilla and Odagiri never rings you up to hang out. That's right, in Vanilla not only does every single student council meeting have forced downtime after a rank up, there is no point in the link where having a matching Persona actually makes it go any faster, resulting in a link that takes almost twice as long to complete. It also has the unique distinction of being the only dialogue choice driven Social Link in the series where giving the correct answers matters, but having a matching persona doesn't. It's not a semi-automatic link like Devil or Sun, it's not a sidequest driven link like Hermit in 4, it's not like time limited Social Links added in re-releases that are essentially Semi-Automatic with choices in them to screw yourself out of finishing it, it's a just a weirdly annoying link to route in. Onto what Personae we get from this!
For FES and Portable, we have,
Forneus: Level 7
Oberon: Level 15
Take-Mikazuchi: Level 24
King Frost: Level 30 (Special Fusion, requires an item from an Elizabeth request to create)
Naga Raja: Level 36
Kingu: Level 46
Barong: Level 52
Odin: Level 57 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Emperors serve as our early game Elec access, though many of the Personae found within also double as decent physical attackers. The main outlier is King Frost, who requires a sidequest to be completed to create him anyway. Emperors also have a solid function as easy ways to access good skills that you can then fuse down onto more powerful Personae. Forneus picks up Auto-Sukukaja, Take-Mikazuchi has innate Auto-Tarukaja, Naga Raja has Matarukaja, Kingu has Mediarama and Barong has the very situational Null Poison (but the situation you want it for is absolutely critical). Take-Mikazuchi is also part of the extremely overpowered Thunder Call fusion spell, but the main draw of this Arcana is its Ultimate: Odin. Odin picks up one of the most broken spells in the history of MegaTen in general, Thunder Reign. Thunder Reign is the ultimate Elec spell that deals more than double the damage of Ziodyne, obviously already a good thing. What puts it over something like say, Ragnarok, is its secondary effect: It has a 100% chance of Shocking anything not immune to the status. Remember that Shock guarantees all physical attacks against the affected enemy are now Critical Hits. This is unbelievably broken for multiple reasons. Aside from ratcheting up your party's damage, almost nothing in the game is actually immune to Shock, including the Reaper who can easily be cheesed with this skill. Anything not immune to Knock Down also can be smashed down with All Out Attacks, and if it some how survives you can just fire off another one with the next critical hit in line. It has a bit of RNG to contend with in non-story battles due the randomness of turn order in those, but if you're willing to just reset on The Reaper until you get a good turn order then that hardly matters. The only limiting factor is that Odin himself only picks up Elec Amp and not Boost in addition like Surt does with his passives, so you need to fuse it into him to maximize the damage of Thunder Reign itself. That's relatively easy to accomplish though, so it's not that big of a deal. Due to the excess amount of free time you have to play Arcade games in FES, there's also not really any reason to fuse Odin upward once you have him, so he essentially is just the best Elec Persona in the game. Now for Reload,
Forneus: Level 7
Oberon: Level 16
Take-Mikazuchi: Level 23
King Frost: Level 34 (Special Fusion, requires an item from an Elizabeth request to create)
Naga Raja: Level 43
Belphegor: Level 53
Barong: Level 63
Odin: Level 74 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Pretty similar, actually, with some of the later reps having their levels slid back a bit. This is hardly noticeable though due to Reload's different level curve. Belphegor is a new addition, being a pretty solid Dark caster, and King Frost now has the added benefit of being one half the extremely powerful King and I Theurgy, though obviously you don't need to have him specifically on hand to cast it after you fuse him initially. Thunder Reign has been nerfed a bit, being a 60% chance to proc Shock instead of 100%, and more things actually resisting that status like you'd expect. He's worth running through to get the spell, but changes to how your nights are spent and the replacement of stat cards with incenses means that like with Surt, you'll likely fuse him up not long after creating him.
I'll be updating this post incrementally. There's quite a lot to say as we get into the weeds of more complicated Social Links, so this may very well end up being a two part mechanics post by the LP's end!
This is a post I've been meaning to write for awhile but we've only just recently seen the full extent of ways we can game this system, so I held off a bit. I'll be updating the post in pieces and as we unlock new links, since obviously I'd rather not spoil anything before it has a chance to come up (and in the former case this means I'm not writing a whole bunch at once.)
Social Links are the backbone of Persona 3's streamlined social simulator gameplay. A number of interpersonal connections as well as some story segments cause the formation of Social Links, gamifying the concept of friendship and assigning a numerical rank to how close you are to people. Beyond providing a wealth of extra detail to the secondary cast of Persona and maybe helping your protagonist learn some things about life, Social Links also provide power in the form of fusion bonuses. Each link represents an Arcana, and each Persona underneath that Arcana will gain additional experience when fused. Naturally, Personae that are fused and have high level social links backing them have much more power out of the starting gate than anything you could hope to find from Shuffle Time. The bonus EXP is as follows,
Rank 1: 1 Level Up
Rank 3: 2 Level Ups
Rank 5: 3 Level Ups
Rank 8: 4 Level Ups
Rank 10 (Or Rank MAX): 5 Level Ups
Aside from the gap from level 5 to 8, every 2 social link ranks from Rank 1 yields another Level Up for a fused Persona of a given Arcana. In P3 Vanilla and FES, fused Personae actually gain the full amount of Experience displayed for the fusion performed and can end off much closer to a level up for it, making the in-between ranks have mechanical benefit. For some reason starting with Persona 4 and back ported in Portable and Reload, any EXP gained in excess of the last level up a Persona gets from their fusion bonus is just lost, though Reload introduces the Lovers major Arcana card (grants extra EXP from Social Link bonuses when performing fusions) that can actually get some value out of this normally lost EXP at least. Perhaps it goes without saying but just so it's clear, Personae fused without a Social Link established for their Arcana gain no bonus EXP from fusion, though they still inherit skills at least. Naturally, this makes Personae of certain Arcana undesirable to use as not every Social Link is established within the timeframe you can expect to be able to actually these Personae. One final benefit of Social Links is that when a Link is maxed out, it unlocks a new Persona for fusion. These Max Rank Personae are among the best in the game, and are well worth a look if you qualify for creating them.
So we know the benefits of Social Links now, but what actually are they? Like I said, they are a gamified reflection of your bonds with others, and are established through a variety of means. Social Links will form the bulk of your daytime activity in Persona 3 (and some nighttime activity), with almost any day where you are given the choice on what to do being dedicated to them. Every Arcana in the game save for 2 has a specific representative for it, and you can dedicate your limited time slots to hanging out with said representative and hopefully obtain a rank up for their Social Link. Social Links come in 4 flavors.
Automatic: Automatic Social Links are ones that are established purely through plot progression. No conscious effort is required on the player's part to advance these, merely getting through the game will cause Automatic links to go up. Naturally, this is the rarest type of link, with only 3 of this type existing in Persona 3. The Fool Social Link is an example of an Automatic Link. Another notable thing about Automatic links is that they occasionally skip levels, such as the Death Social Link going from Rank 1 to Rank 3 when it first levels up.
Semi-Automatic: Semi-Automatic links are ones that you do have to initiate on your own time (and often they have social stat checks you need to pass to initiate them), but do not require any particular special care taken to complete them beyond that. When you engage in a Semi-Automatic link, it will always Rank Up regardless of anything. The Devil Social Link is an example of a Semi-Automatic link.
Streamlined: Streamlined links are ones that do require specific actions from the player to advance as fast as possible, but if said actions are taken then the link will complete either within 10 social link events or very close to 10 social link events. Emperor in FES and Portable is a very good example of a streamlined link: If you have a Persona of the same Arcana in your stock for every Social Link event and always pick the correct dialogue choices, the Emperor social link will complete in 10 social link events like a Semi-Automatic link would. There are a handful of links that can manage this kind of progression in FES, though for the most part the archetypical Streamlined link will be something like Hierophant or Hanged Man, an out of school link that requires 2-4 additional time slots dedicated to it to complete. Portable and Reload, due to mechanical changes, have the vast majority of their links qualify as Streamlined ones, for different reasons.
Standard: Standard links are the ones you'll most likely want a guide for. Simply picking the right options and having a matching Persona is not enough for Standard links, you will hit roadblocks that can take multiple timeslots from your very limited calendar time if the only way you are choosing to progress these is by hanging out with their representative like normal. The Justice Social Link is a good example of a Standard link: towards the back half of it we will find low point yields from the correct dialogue choices against high point requirements for the next rank up, and we'll want to look for additional means of getting extra points into the link.
So now we know what kind of Links we can see, but what's the actual progression for a Social Link? As you progress through the game, you'll be notified of the existence of a potential Social Link through a variety of means. Some Links will be forced on you by the game, sometimes pre-existing bonds lead to the formation of new ones as people you are Social Linking with will give you leads on other potential people to hang out with, and sometimes you'll just talk to a major character after a story event and find them ready to Social Link with you now. Once a Link is formed, the representative of the Link will be available to hang out with, each rep having specific days they can be interacted with for Social Link purposes. If hang out with them when they have enough Social Link Points, the hang out will be a Rank Up event, advancing the Social Link to its next story beat and enhancing the effects it has on Persona Fusions.
I've mentioned Points a few times now, what's that about? Every Social Link has a "Score" tied to it that determines whether or note a hang out is a rank up event, and this score is always reset to zero when you trigger a rank up event. When participating in the rank up event, you'll be faced with dialogue choices. Certain choices yield Social Link Points, with "better" choices giving you more points. If the points gained from picking the right choices matches or exceeds the Score needed to get a rank up, then the next time you engage in a Social Link event with someone, it will be a rank up event again. If you didn't get enough points, and there will be times where you won't get enough points no matter what, additional actions will need to be taken to get the next rank up event. Usually, this is done by just hanging out with someone normally and getting a generic event that has no dialogue choices and instead awards a set amount of points depending on if you have a matching Arcana Persona or not (more on that below). There will be plenty of times in FES and Portable where you do this, but it has limitations: namely that it can only be done on a Social Link reps normal schedule and sometimes it still isn't enough to secure the points for a rank up event. Luckily, there are other means to get more points for our Social Links.
The first and biggest one, as I've mentioned repeatedly: Having a Persona that matches the Arcana of a Social Link rep in your stock grants a bonus to points gained from social link events. Specifically, it awards a 51% bonus to any point increase you get, with the result rounded down in the case of a decimal. Portable specifically also adds a new function to the Charm social stat: When Charm is maxed out in Portable it will also provide a 51% bonus to all point gains, which stacks with the matching Arcana bonus. Now for any Streamlined link, these bonuses on their own are enough to either guarantee rank ups, or at least ensure that you only need to devote one extra timeslot to a Social Link to get that next rank up. For Standard links though, it pays to know the full extent of ways you can get points outside of rank up events. Now when you participate in a Social Link event but it isn't a rank up event, you will get +10 points if you don't have matching Arcana Persona, +15 points if you do/have Max Charm in Portable, and in Portable specifically you can get +22 points with a matching Persona AND Max Charm. There are a litany of other events that yield this same point bonus, and they include:
Drawing a Relationship Fortune at Naganaki Shrine
Meeting a Social Link character when going on a Walk with Koromaru (Note that in FES and Portable, SEES members who are also Social Links never get this bonus)
Attending the Summer Film Festival with a Social Link rep
Accepting a date invitation from a nighttime/holiday phone call (This one does not exist in Reload)
The first one is probably the main way you'll be getting bonuses outside of a character's normal schedule in FES, the second and third are very situational but are also located at consistent points on the calendar so it's not too hard to route them in once you know about them, and the last is special. In addition to the points you get from accepting a phone invitation, the date itself is excellent for gaining points. When accepting a phone invitation, the next day you have off from school will automatically be a date with the person who invited you (usually this will be Sunday, but there are some holidays that you can get date invitations for). The date event will present you with a dialogue choice, much like a rank up event, and picking the right choice yields a +30/+45 point bonus! Additionally, dates with your female classmates will prompt you the option to give a gift (In Portable, this was changed so that you can give gifts to Men and Women when playing as the FemC). Giving a gift a girl likes is +10/+15, while giving a gift she loves is a staggering +50/+75! Now there were a couple times in Persona 3 Vanilla where the latter was necessary, but there is no link in FES and Portable where the points from just giving the right answer isn't enough. With some good scheduling, it is possible to get the points to rank up from accepting a phone invitation, get that rank up event, and the use the ensuing date when it comes up to get the next bunch of points you need to get the next rank up! This does come up a few times in FES, so don't neglect this avenue for Social Links! In Reload on the other hand, dates are essentially pointless as the general point requirements for every rank up event have been reduced heavily, resulting in most links qualifying as streamlined ones.
As for some final miscellaneous points before we get onto the links themselves. Any points gained in excess of the amount required for a rank up are useless since the score resets to zero when you finally trigger a rank up event. Say we have a link that has two rank up events in a row that require 30 Social Link points. Going into the first rank up event with 60 points in tow does not mean we will automatically get the succeeding rank up event. This behooves you to initiate rank up events as soon as you qualify for them. Thankfully, there are different ways you can gleam this information: in FES a character that is ready to rank up will approach you during lunch time at school on a day where they can engage in a social link event (this does not apply for out of school links, but those are baseline Streamlined links with oodles of free time to approach them, so it hardly matters). In Portable and Reload, the game will simply tell you if the character is ready for a rank up when you talk to them ("You feel your relationship will become stronger soon..."). Is it possible to lose Social Link points? No, but you can gain them slowly or damage your relationships. Picking the "wrong" dialogue choices in rank up events obviously yields less-to-no points, and occasionally you'll come across what I call "land mines" that will cause your Social Link to reverse if you pick them. A reversed Link provides no fusion bonus when creating a Persona of the affected Arcana, and you either need to draw a relationship fortune to fix it or participate in a Social Link event where you try to smooth things over with the person you upset. Most of these land mines are obvious, but there is one infamous one in Vanilla/FES that tons of people have tripped over. Speaking of Links reversing, FES exudes a bit of extra pressure here. Our in-school social links (e.g. Kenji, Kaz) have a 90-day limit to interact with them. This can be participating in normal Social Link events or even just drawing a relationship fortune, but if there is no activity on a social link within 90 days, the link will reverse. That's just for links with Male classmates though, for Female classmates this limit is 60 days. Additionally, the MC's social links with female class mates in Vanilla, FES and Portable automatically become romantic and introduce a Jealousy mechanic. Once a link becomes romantic, engaging in a Social Link event with another Female classmate reduces this count by 15 days, making it very precarious to juggle multiple Social Links with Female classmates at the same time. I'm not sure if Social Links that take place outside of school fall under this mechanic for Reversals, but you're given designated weeks where these are the only Links you can pursue every other month so it hardly matters if they do. For one final reversal related mechanic, double-booking for a date on a day off will result in an automatic reversal for whoever you decide to stand up. Naturally, if you've already planned a date, do not accept another one should you receive a call. It's worth noting at this point that maxed out social links are unbreakable, and cannot reverse once established. This can lead to a funny situation where you can accept multiple phone dates for the points it gives, max out one of the Social Links in the interim until the day of the date, and then stand up the person you maxed out with no fear of the link reversing.
Phew! Now to go over the specific Social Links, how we establish them, their schedules, and what Personae they affect. Some Arcana are easier to advance than others and some are tied to simply better Personae, so this information can be handy to know if you have a purely practical approach to this game!
The Fool
Fittingly for the card representing the journey's beginning, The Fool is our first Social Link. It's also a non-indicative one for the system as a whole, as it is an Automatic Link with no specific representative. Instead, The Fool represents the bond between SEES as a whole. A cute little detail is that as you gain new members for SEES, their names will populate the list for who this Link represents when you check it in the Social Link menu. Like said previously, The Fool is an Automatic Link the increases when you pass by certain days on the calendar. Once established, it usually increases in response to defeating a Full Moon Shadow, but there are some outliers to this. The dates this link increases are,
Establishes at Rank 1 on 4/20 (Blaze It)
4/21
5/9
7/7
7/22
11/2
11/4
11/28 (Skips Rank 8 and goes to 9)
12/31 (Only if you choose to fight on)
In addition to the usual fusion bonuses a Social Link provides, the early rank ups for this link vaguely coincide with mechanical upgrades, stopping at Rank 5 for additional goodies. In FES, Rank 3 coincides with learning the Knock Down Tactic, Rank 4 coincides with learning the Full Assault Tactic and Rank 5... doesn't coincide with anything but it's the last rank you get before learning the Same Target tactic from beating Chariot and Justice. The Conserve SP Tactic just goes unrepresented. In Portable, Rank 3 coincides with gaining the Co-Op attack mechanic, while Rank 5 unlocks the diving save mechanic. Contrary to what you might read in some places, the ability to endure fatal blows is NOT tied to this link, that's a separate upgrade. Reload, rather disappointingly, does not have any extra mechanical benefits associated with this link.
You probably noticed right away that this link gets to Rank 5 relatively quickly and the stagnates for a long ass time. For a fairly long stretch of the game, Personae under this Arcana will only gain 3 levels off of fusion, I suppose a fair trade for the automatic nature of the link. Are there any worthwhile Personae under this Arcana? Well for FES and Portable,
FES/Portable Fool Personae
Orpheus: Level 1
Slime: Level 12
Legion: Level 22
Black Frost: Level 34 (Special Fusion)
Ose: Level 44
Decarabia: Level 50
Loki: Level 58
Susano-o: Level 76 (Special Fusion, unlocked at Max Rank)
Note there is one more Fool Persona that was added in FES and retained for all future versions of the game, but he is special and will be covered at specific point down the line.
Fool Personae can only be created via Triangle Spread or Special Fusions in FES and Portable, so you won't actually end up seeing them all that often when fusing junk off. Are any of them worth it? Ehhh. Fool Personae have the unique trait of having the Universal inheritance type (with the notable exception of Orpheus, who is a Fire Inheritance type), meaning there is no limitation on what skills they can get from fusion and they do not favor any particular skill when it comes to probability of inheriting them. This makes Fool Personae fairly customizable, but that also entails grappling with Persona 3's awful fusion inheritance system, which I'd rather chew glass than spend a ton of time on. Fool Personae as of FES are more notable for their use as weapon fusion material, as they create 1 Attack Power 99 Accuracy weapons with unique effects. I go over the full extent of these in the Antique Shop post, but notable ones include Legion providing +100 HP and Black Frost providing +10 MA. Beyond that, none of them jump out and say "I'm Awesome!" and most of them are unremarkable generalists with no interesting skills picked up to potentially fuse into other things. Decarabia is required for the Best Friends fusion spell, but that spell is very situational and I only know of one fight where it is extremely good. Things are a bit different in Reload,
Reload Fool Personae
Orpheus: Level 1
Slime: Level 12
Legion: Level 26
Black Frost: Level 37 (Special Fusion)
Ose: Level 41
Decarabia: Level 54
Loki: Level 69
Susano-o: Level 77 (Special Fusion, Unlocked at Max Rank)
Triangle Spreads are gone, so you're much more likely to stumble upon these guys by happenstance, and there are some pretty notable picks here! The Arcana is pretty low-key (no pun intended) until you can create Black Frost who is now creatable as soon as you reach his level. In addition to enabling the ever useful King and I Theurgy, Black Frost is a phenomenal Persona that picks up our first Tier 3 magic in Bufudyne and Agidyne. He also picks up useful passives like Fast Heal and Dark Boost, on top of having excellent resistances and picking up Resist Light to patch out his only weakness.. Customization is also much easier in Reload since you can now pick what skills you get directly, so that Universal inheritance type means that Black Frost and most any Fool Persona are now very easy to kit through a mixture of smart fusions and skill cards. Ose also has had the extremely useful Life Aid passive added to his skill list, making him a great way to access that skill and pass it around if you haven't built up an Eligor. Ose also has the fringe perk of being an excellent Slash attacker, so there's extra incentive there to create him. The final notable Persona is Loki, who in addition to coming with the 4 -dyne spells, picks up the Spell Master passive that halves SP costs. Loki also has helpful passives like Single Target Boost and Soul Shift, making him pretty great for general exploration purposes! All in all, a pretty solid Arcana considering you don't need to take any special care with its Link.
The Magician
Our first "real" social link, and one that is also hoisted upon us automatically in all versions of the game, albeit at very slightly different times. (4/22 in all versions except for Portable where it starts on 4/23) As you'd expect from an early game link, the Magician lowballs it by being a Streamlined link that only requires one additional Social Link event to Max out, and said Event can be done in a way that doesn't lose any time. You will need a matching Persona and the correct answers most of the time, as you'd expect of any link, but you'd have to make a mistake to lose any calendar time to this link in FES and Reload. Before going forward, let me lay out how I'll represent the progression for each Link. For FES, the progression will look like this,
Initial | 1(22) | 15(28) | etc.
The first rank of every Social Link does not have any dialogue choices for you to select, nor are you expected to gain any points to get Rank 2. Starting from Rank 2, you will need to be selecting the correct choices to advance the link in the minimum amount of time required. The first number is the point requirement for the succeeding Rank Up event, while the parenthetical number is the maximum amount possible from the Rank Up event itself. I will always be using the numbers that assume you have the matching Persona, so be sure to keep that in mind! Note that all Rank 2 events either require 1 or no points to get to the next Rank Up event, so every Social Link is pretty casual for scheduling starting out.
For Portable, this format will largely be the same with one distinction,
Initial | 1(22/33) | 15(28/36) | etc.
The second parenthetical number represents the maximum points possible if you have a matching Persona AND maxed out Charm. The second number doesn't really matter until around July where you have your first realistic chance to have maxed the stat, but it's good to keep in mind from that point on. Pretty much any Streamlined link can also be completed in the minimum with just one of these bonuses, so it takes some of the stress off of needing to have specific Personae all the time for Social Linking.
Now for Reload, I don't have any resources that actually tell me the numbers involved for Social Link progression beyond the numerical Ranks of each Rank Up event. So instead, I'll be representing the progression like this,
Initial | O | O | X | O | etc.
An O means that all the points to get to the succeeding Rank Up event can be gotten from Rank Up dialogue choices you are currently on. X means that the dialogue choices alone won't get you to where you need to be, and more will need to be done in order to get a Rank Up the next time you participate in a Social Link event. A bit inelegant, but rarely will this require more than a matching Persona and a relationship fortune in Reload as all Links progress way faster in this version. With that out of the way,
Kenji Tomochika represents the Magician Social Link for the Male Character, and in FES & Reload he will invite you to hang out on 4/22, automatically initiating this link for you. Kenji is available to Social Link with on Tues., Thurs. and Fri. assuming school is in session and an exam isn't coming up within a week. His Rank Up progression is as follows,
Initial | 1(14) | 15(29 | 15(22) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 22(21) | 22(29) | 22(22)| Max
Initial | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | Max
Kenji proves to be a very basic fellow, and this is hammered in with his Link progression. Only in FES do you have to sacrifice one extra timeslot to max him out at Rank 7, and that is easily accomplished at no real time loss by simply going to Film Festival with him during the Summer. In Reload, that is unnecessary and Kenji is a true Streamlined link that just requires the right dialogue options with a matching Persona. Fittingly with how easy it is to max this Link out, the Magician Arcana governs a bunch of useful early game Personae, giving mechanical incentive to hang out with Kenji if you're just looking to be pragmatic. Things are a little different in Portable though, as the FemC wants nothing to do with Kenji. Instead,
Junpei Iori represents the Magician Social Link for the FemC in Persona 3 Portable. In an effort to give more characterization to the Male members of SEES, all of them have claimed a different Arcana to represent as a Social Link for the FemC, although amusingly not all of them have been given Arcana that matches the Arcana of their Persona. Junpei is not one of those outliers though, instead bucking convention by having a decidedly more complex Link than Kenji. Junpei will automatically spring his initiation event on you on 4/23, and is available to Social Link with on Tues. and Thurs., a slightly narrower timeframe than Kenji that proves to be more limited than you'd think due to Junpei's progression.
Initial | 0(37/56) | 0(66/101) | 30(14/22) | 30(22/34) | 35(22/34) | 35(66/101) | 40(66/101) | 40(37/56) | Max
As you can see, Junpei starts out fairly undemanding, but rapidly hits you with back to back Rank Ups that necessitate additional time slots dedicated to him in order to keep things going. It's important to note that only on New Game + do we have the possibility of getting that Max Charm bonus for Rank 4, so that one actually requires either two social link events or two relationship fortunes to clear the points required for Rank 5 to happen! Fortunately things smooth out a bit after that, and by Rank 9 you should have the maximum Charm required to get the necessary points for Maxing out. Because Junpei is only available two days of the week to hang out with, he'll be common early recipient for Relationship Fortunes. Serendipitously, due to the Hermit link now being a School Link, the FemC has very little to do on Sundays and Holidays starting out, so these are easy time slots to spend on Junpei. This is an early indicator of the general trend for SEES Social Links in Portable: Since several links have been swapped out entirely or moved to a Night time slot, the remaining daytime links generally demand more of you to advance them. All that being said though, Junpei isn't too difficult to Max out relative to Kenji, and because of the more limited options the FemC has to spend her daytime, he'll probably Max out even faster than Kenji like he has already in the LP proper.
As stated previously, Magician is the archetypical Early Game Arcana. Many of the Personae feature within find themselves within pre-defined niches and make great fusion fodder for creating future specialists down the line, should you be willing to farm the assets needed to pull them from the compendium. In FES and Portable, our prospects for the Arcana are,
Nekomata: Level 5
Jack Frost: Level 8
Pyro Jack: Level 14
Hua Po (Special Persona, must complete an Elizabeth Date to fuse): Level 20
Sati: Level 28
Orobas: Level 34
Rangda: Level 40
Surt: Level 52 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Unlike Fool, and like many Arcana available in the Early Game, Magician has no Special Fusions. Magician Personae have very straightforward and obvious uses: several of them unlock the Elemental Boost Passives. Jack Frost carries Ice Boost, and at an incredibly early point for the stage of the game he is creatable. Hua Po carries Fire Boost, and Orobas, while a bit late in comparison, is also an easy way to access Wind Boost. Aside from Orobas and Jack Frost, most Magician Personae are Fire based, so they are the premier Fire Casters for a good chunk of the game, especially if you do Triangle Spread upgrades with them. In particular, Sati makes a good mid-game source of Fire damage due to her innate Agilao and Maragi. The real centerpiece of Magician, though, is Surt. Surt makes putting up with Kenji entirely worth it, and makes Junpei even more of a GOAT than he already is. Surt is absolutely cracked, coming in with innate Fire Boost, learning Fire Amp, Maragidyne, and he also is the only Persona that learns the Tier 4 Fire spell Ragnarok. Surt is a must-have for maximizing Fire damage, and due to the Arcade Games and Stat Cards that exist in FES/Portable, he is inarguably the best Fire Persona in the game. In both of these games, you have ample time to cap out his MA stat, and since he comes with everything a Fire caster could care about by default, there is no reason to fuse past him in The Journey. Now over in Reload,
Nekomata: Level 3
Jack Frost: Level 8
Jack 'o Lantern: Level 15
Hua Po (Special Persona, must complete an Elizabeth Date to fuse): Level 19
Sati: Level 29
Orobas: Level 39
Rangda: Level 50
Surt: Level 60
Futsunushi: Level 74 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Reload made an effort to make the various Arcana less obviously tiered relative to each other, so most have either picked up a new Ultimate Persona or have had their general levels raised up a bit. Both in Magician's case. Despite this, due to the expedited Level curve of Reload, most of these Personae serve the same function they do in FES and Portable. Surt is no longer the end all-be all for Fire casters since he longer has innate Fire Boost, and the retooled Incense system paired with extra Night activities means it's less practical to just max him out and call it a day. He does still have exclusive Level up access to Inferno (formerly Ragnarok), so he's worth creating to fuse that around but it's safe to say his best days are behind him. Futsunushi goes against the grain of the Magician Arcana by instead being a Slash specialist. The most notable thing about him is that he picks up the Unshaken Will passive at Level 81, a passive that makes you immune to all ailments save for Poison, Freeze, Shock, Down and DIzzy, and was previously found only on Sun Asura. This is something to consider, though the only thing you want that passive for is a bonus boss that requires capped out levels anyway. For conventional purposes, there is an accessory that just makes you immune to all ailments and can simply be purchased.
The [High]Priestess
Everyone's favorite captain of the obvious, Fuuka Yamagishi, is the representative for the [High]Priestess Social Link in all 3 versions of the game. While Fuuka is not the first possible romantic partner for the MC you'll encounter, she's the first one we'll be covering so she's a good object example of the general progression for these links. Note that while she's not explicitly a romantic option for the FemC, all shared Social Links with female SEES members follow pretty similar scripts to the MC's and tend to be pretty thick in Sapphic vibes due to this. It's a shame they didn't commit to that.
For being the first female SEES member you can establish a Social Link with, Fuuka has a remarkably complicated set of unlock requirements. Obviously she needs to have entered the story and joined SEES. At that point, not long after you'll be prompted to join a Culture Club. Pick the one you want to tumble 4, and Fuuka will just happen to be a member of the same club. At that point, she will be available to converse with on the second floor hallway of school every Monday, Friday and Saturday. If you have maxed out your Courage stat, you will be able to initiate Fuuka's Social Link and progress it on the previously mentioned days. The earliest all of these can be fulfilled is 6/19, which is the deadline to max out Courage if you want to start Fuuka's Link right away. It's not too difficult to accomplish if you know what you're doing, but it can be easy to fail this if you don't know the best ways to maximize courage. For Portable, this is actually way simpler. Fuuka will want to form her own club on 6/15, and you only need Rank 2 Courage to agree to her proposal. Onto progression!
Initial | 1(22) | 15(22) | 22(22) | 30(29) | 30(22) | 0(35) | 40(29) | 0(55) | Max
As you can see, once Rank 5 is reached, there is not a single event where we can get the points we need for the next Rank Up just from the event dialogues alone. Rank 9 in particular affords you know points, putting Fuuka in the unique spot where even a successful date will not get us a rank up and we'll need to supply her with a gift she likes to get that little bit of extra. Pretty much all Romantic social links follow this progression, and if you are just pursing them via the regularly available Social Link events, they will burn way too much time. It would take 4 hang outs or 4 Relationship Fortunes to get from Rank 9 to Max, even with a matching Persona! Now for Portable,
Initial | 0(15/22) | 15(37/56) | 22(30/44) | 22(37/56) | 30(22/34) | 30(22/33) | 35(0/0) | 40(22/34) | Max
Much easier to progress, particularly because by the time we'll reach her we will also be adding in the max Charm Bonus to our point gains. In fact, that combo nearly makes the Social Link a streamlined one right up until the end where we get some major point gates with a lack of dialogue choices to blow past them. Past that, Fuuka's cooking club also supplies us with gifts in the form of the treats we bake with her. These can be handy for bypassing other point gates in other links should you go on dates with them, or even help you bypass Fuuka's own point requirements if you route it right. For Reload,
Initial | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | X(?) | X | X | Max
For Rank 8, I'm not actually sure if there's a point gate or not, but there will be a huge lull in activity for Fuuka's Social Link as a new mechanic introduced in Reload makes it ideal to save the back half of Social Links with female SEES members for the end of the game. Due to more generous point yields (or maybe just lower requirements) for Social Links in Reload, Streamlined is the new standard and any means of ekeing out extra Social Link points is usually enough to clear any point gates you may come across if you're picking all the right answers.
The [High]Priestess Arcana is another archetypical early game Arcana, though not one I think is quite as good as Magician. Priestess Personae mostly focus on Ice and Healing Magic, with some outliers such as Unicorn and the FES/Portable version of Kikuri-Hime. Speaking of the FES/Portable Priestess list,
Apsaras: Level 3
Unicorn: Level 11
High Pixie: Level 21
Sarasvati: Level 27
Ganga: Level 35
Parvati: Level 47
Kikuri-Hime: Level 53
Scathach (Unlocked at Max Rank): Level 64
Early game, Apsaras is half the extremely useful Cadenza spell, so if you're like me you'll often have her in the back pocket for casting that spell in FES. Unicorn is one of your earlier means of using Hama skills, but early Hama skills are too inconsistent to care about. Past that, the next most notable Persona is Sarasvati, who learns both Bufula and Ice Boost. With a Max rank for the Priestess link, you can do a triangle spread with High Pixie and Ganga to create a Parvati who will also gain Bufudyne off the level ups. Parvati is a solid ice caster for most of the rest of the game, and does form one half an interesting fusion spell, though she doesn't pick up Ice Amp so you may need to fuse her up if you don't want to commit to Varuna Bracers. Kikuri-Hime is another means to access Cool Breeze, though she's far from the best due to how relatively late she is picked up, and she's uncharacteristically a Fire casting Priestess at a point where you already have access to the broken Surt. Scathach is very whatever, no special skills I care about and an unfocused skill set that picks up Myriad Arrows, Mabufudyne and Magarudyne. Overall, not an Arcana that has anything I think is amazing, though Parvati has potential. For Reload,
Apsaras: Level 2
Unicorn: Level 11
High Pixie: Level 20
Sarasvati: Level 32
Ganga: Level 41
Parvati: Level 48 (Special Fusion)
Kikuri-Hime: Level 61
Scathach: Level 75
Reload shifts the focus of the Priestess Arcana much harder towards healing, with many of its reps now picking up multi-targeting healing skills when they previously didn't. Sarasvati is among your earliest options for accessing the extremely useful Mediarama spell, and it is well worth your time to make her. Kikuri-Hime is now an Ice caster and also picks up Mediarahan, making her also a pretty good pick up once you reach the necessary level. Other than that, the Arcana is actually pretty similar to how it was originally. Scathach is once again a weird generalist with no particularly interesting skills. It is worth noting that customizing any Persona you want to be an unbeatable tank of death is much easier in Reload due to the retooled skill card system and the much easier to use inheritance system, but I do place some value on Personae who don't take much work to be made awesome. It's hard to justify advocating something like, I dunno Ganga, when Black Frost is right there.
The Emperor
In all versions of Persona 3, The Emperor is represented by Hidetoshi Odagiri and is associated with Gekkoukan's student council. This is the first "club" link we'll be covering in Arcana order, though the first actual club link you can initiate is Chariot. Odagiri is somewhat unique in that though he is a school related link and follows the normal calendar restrictions those have, his association with the protagonist is largely professional and your only option to earn points for his link outside of Rank Up events is relationship fortunes (Okay Reload has a second option, but it's available very late in the game). Mitsuru will approach you on 4/27 and give you the option to up your membership for the student council, though you can put it off for awhile if you want to work on other links that are available at the time. The student council meets on Mon, Weds, Fri and Sat(except in Portable where Saturday is dropped). Odagiri is also sort of the platonic ideal of a streamlined link, as in all versions except for Vanilla and one rank in Portable, having a matching Persona and picking the correct answer will let you complete the link in 10 interactions. From FES to Reload, the Rank up requirements are,
Initial | 1(22) | 1(7) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 15(22) | 22(22) | 22(22) | Max
Initial | 1(22/34) | 1(7/11) | 15(22/34) | 15(22/34) | 15(7/11) | 15(22/34) | 22(22/34) | 22(22/34) | Max
Initial | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | Max
As you can see, Odagiri is pretty easy to max out due to his frequent availability and low requirements. He does need an Oracle burned on him for 1 day in Portable, but the FemC has almost nothing to do on Sunday's until the Sun Social Link enters the picture so that's not really a big deal. For the most part, I don't plan to cover Vanilla progression for these write ups since Vanilla is not the main focus of this LP, but I do want to cover interesting niche cases, and Odagiri is definitely one of them. In Vanilla, his progression is a lot more obnoxious.
Initial | 1(22) | 10(0) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | 25(22) | Max
Remember that without a matching Persona, those 22's are actually 15's and that the point bonus you get for attending a non-rank up social link event without a matching Persona is 10. Also note that Relationship Fortunes don't exist in Vanilla and Odagiri never rings you up to hang out. That's right, in Vanilla not only does every single student council meeting have forced downtime after a rank up, there is no point in the link where having a matching Persona actually makes it go any faster, resulting in a link that takes almost twice as long to complete. It also has the unique distinction of being the only dialogue choice driven Social Link in the series where giving the correct answers matters, but having a matching persona doesn't. It's not a semi-automatic link like Devil or Sun, it's not a sidequest driven link like Hermit in 4, it's not like time limited Social Links added in re-releases that are essentially Semi-Automatic with choices in them to screw yourself out of finishing it, it's a just a weirdly annoying link to route in. Onto what Personae we get from this!
For FES and Portable, we have,
Forneus: Level 7
Oberon: Level 15
Take-Mikazuchi: Level 24
King Frost: Level 30 (Special Fusion, requires an item from an Elizabeth request to create)
Naga Raja: Level 36
Kingu: Level 46
Barong: Level 52
Odin: Level 57 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Emperors serve as our early game Elec access, though many of the Personae found within also double as decent physical attackers. The main outlier is King Frost, who requires a sidequest to be completed to create him anyway. Emperors also have a solid function as easy ways to access good skills that you can then fuse down onto more powerful Personae. Forneus picks up Auto-Sukukaja, Take-Mikazuchi has innate Auto-Tarukaja, Naga Raja has Matarukaja, Kingu has Mediarama and Barong has the very situational Null Poison (but the situation you want it for is absolutely critical). Take-Mikazuchi is also part of the extremely overpowered Thunder Call fusion spell, but the main draw of this Arcana is its Ultimate: Odin. Odin picks up one of the most broken spells in the history of MegaTen in general, Thunder Reign. Thunder Reign is the ultimate Elec spell that deals more than double the damage of Ziodyne, obviously already a good thing. What puts it over something like say, Ragnarok, is its secondary effect: It has a 100% chance of Shocking anything not immune to the status. Remember that Shock guarantees all physical attacks against the affected enemy are now Critical Hits. This is unbelievably broken for multiple reasons. Aside from ratcheting up your party's damage, almost nothing in the game is actually immune to Shock, including the Reaper who can easily be cheesed with this skill. Anything not immune to Knock Down also can be smashed down with All Out Attacks, and if it some how survives you can just fire off another one with the next critical hit in line. It has a bit of RNG to contend with in non-story battles due the randomness of turn order in those, but if you're willing to just reset on The Reaper until you get a good turn order then that hardly matters. The only limiting factor is that Odin himself only picks up Elec Amp and not Boost in addition like Surt does with his passives, so you need to fuse it into him to maximize the damage of Thunder Reign itself. That's relatively easy to accomplish though, so it's not that big of a deal. Due to the excess amount of free time you have to play Arcade games in FES, there's also not really any reason to fuse Odin upward once you have him, so he essentially is just the best Elec Persona in the game. Now for Reload,
Forneus: Level 7
Oberon: Level 16
Take-Mikazuchi: Level 23
King Frost: Level 34 (Special Fusion, requires an item from an Elizabeth request to create)
Naga Raja: Level 43
Belphegor: Level 53
Barong: Level 63
Odin: Level 74 (Unlocked at Max Rank)
Pretty similar, actually, with some of the later reps having their levels slid back a bit. This is hardly noticeable though due to Reload's different level curve. Belphegor is a new addition, being a pretty solid Dark caster, and King Frost now has the added benefit of being one half the extremely powerful King and I Theurgy, though obviously you don't need to have him specifically on hand to cast it after you fuse him initially. Thunder Reign has been nerfed a bit, being a 60% chance to proc Shock instead of 100%, and more things actually resisting that status like you'd expect. He's worth running through to get the spell, but changes to how your nights are spent and the replacement of stat cards with incenses means that like with Surt, you'll likely fuse him up not long after creating him.
I'll be updating this post incrementally. There's quite a lot to say as we get into the weeds of more complicated Social Links, so this may very well end up being a two part mechanics post by the LP's end!
Last edited by Cullen on Wed Mar 12, 2025 1:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
After some delays, Part 38 is out! It's a longer Full Moon video than usual due to how the in-game scheduling fell for this month, but that just makes it all the richer in things that happen! Aigis begins her school infiltration and blends in immaculately, Akihiko seems to tap into some personal baggage to finally get Shinji back in SEES, and I absolutely stomp this moon cycles Shadow in a devastating show of force. Things are looking up for SEES!
Extra Notes
In FES
-The dual Gungnir setup is pretty overkill, but it's very fun. I'd like to have it sooner rather than later anyway, so I figured I'd just pick it up at the first available opportunity. Ken's going to be locked into the party in FES going forward provided there's no night where he has to focus on his homework or something.
-Star Personae can be fused into weapons to nullify Akihiko's Ice weakness, and Akihiko will be another party lock later so I fuse off a Nandi to secure that for him. It's not immediately useful, but it'll come in handy down the line.
-We hit Genius level Academics! This has multiple benefits to us. For one, with all my social stats maxed and both night links completed, I'm now completely free to just use Arcade games to boost up my Personae. This isn't super useful right now, but by next Moon cycle we will be reaching the levels necessary to fuse Ultimate Personae like Surt. Using Lucky Fortune to max out Surt's MA is hilariously overpowered, so I'm eager to show that off. Another fringe perk is that since we no longer need to study, our late night timeslot can always be used for sleeping early. This means any Tartarus expedition going forward will see the Protag in the Great status, which is a nice little bonus to all his attributes. Knowledge is power!
-Because the PS2 versions of Persona 3 lack any means to guard attacks, you kind of have no choice but to face tank The Hermit's charge attacks. If you're not confident that you can survive them, you can pop a Magic Mirror as a to nullify it. I don't think he drains Elec skills, but I ultimately decided it wasn't worth breaking my offense for.
-The shock status is hilariously useless to The Hermit in non-Reload versions of the game. Since it cures the moment a character's turn comes around and they can still act after that, he literally has no way to follow up on it.
In Portable
-I have something embarrassing to point out... some mistakes! Somehow I forgot to turn in the Old Document request for this Moon Cycle to Theo, so I had to go back and replay to do that. I would have had to do it anyway though, because I also screwed up on Fuuka's social link. I misinterpreted the answer key for her Rank 6 event and picked the option that didn't give enough points to secure the next rank up! After I finished recording, I went back and replayed the segment since it doesn't take too long when you're just fast forwarding the text. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I stuck with the mistake, as early as November in Portable the FemC has free days to course correct the Priestess link, but I didn't want to have to stray too far from my schedule so I just decided to go with the replay.
-With Ken as a part of SEES, we have new link to spend our nights on! Ken develops a bit faster than Koromaru, but isn't available to hang with as often, only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's nice the FemC now has a rep for the Justice link!
-I didn't check him out in this version since I'm never going to use him anyway, but Shinji is mostly identical to how he is in FES. One key difference is that he already has a built in Endure passive like Koromaru does in this version of the game. Handy!
-I was surprised to see The Hermit go down even faster in this version, I practically didn't need the Tower weapons I secured for Yukari and Aigis. Were I lacking those, I would have needed to play a little more cautious, but even if I had needed a turn to Guard I would have absolutely rinsed him still. Very easy fight in the old versions of the game.
-One amusing thing I saw on my replay is that if you fail to do enough damage to him to prompt his charging phase (I had back-to-back misses with Yukari and Aigis), he can Poison Mist you as an opener. This doesn't accomplish much for him.
In Reload
-Shinji is an absolute Beast in this version. Endure is now a formal skill for him, and he has the extremely powerful Bloody Charge skill in addition to a strong physical skill in Heatwave. His Theurgy is also one of the strongest single target attacks in the game, so with Bloody Charge and the Strike Bracers in effect, it really lays the hurt on anything you hit with it.
-Speaking of Strike Bracers, I picked up those and Pierce Bracers with my Black Quartz since they're good investments for our physical fighters. Nobody but the Protagonist can naturally access the Physical Boost passives, so these are extremely useful to keep around until you get the Amp versions of them.
-Going forward, most of my equipment will be coming from the Antique Store. The stuff that isn't will either be found, or purchased from Club Escapade. The things Kurosawa sells are straight junk in comparison.
-We'll want to focus on Shinji for nightly hangouts going forward. There's a big benefit to knocking his out as soon as possible.
-Speaking of Shinji, his Linked Episode is available to pursue now, but it's similar to Koromaru's. Rather than having a highly specific window of time to access it, instead it's just another daily activity with each stage of the Episode being unlocked more or less right after the last and you can pursue them at your leisure. Like Shinji's hangouts though, it's beneficial to knock this out early.
-The Hermit is way more of a real fight in this version. Not only does he attack independent of his charging phase, the charges speed up as the battle goes on and the attacks he launches become quite nasty. Shock is also more of a threat in this version as you DO lose a turn from being hit with it, and The Hermit has physical attacks to follow up on it with. More than that though, he is WAY more durable in this version, like 4 times the HP. If you don't know how to maximize your damage, this fight can be a slog. Fortunately for all involved, I cooked up a pretty good strategy for accomplishing this. It didn't go as smoothly as it did for me in practice attempts, but it ultimately only took about double the time the fight took in FES, which is actually much better than it sounds.
Social Progress
In FES
Lovers Social Link: Rank 2
Priestess Social Link: Rank 6
Academics: Rank MAX
Unsurprisingly, FES is the first game to hit Max Academics! I could have gotten this done sooner, but we have literally the entire next month and a week and some change of October to accomplish it, so I'm already way ahead of schedule. We're pretty much out of things to do at night, so if I don't need to walk Koromaru or play an Arcade game to boost up a Persona's stats, there will probably be some nights where I just immediately head to bed.
In Portable
Hermit Social Link: Rank 5
Justice Social Link: Rank 2
Strength Social Link: Rank 6
Priestess Social Link: Rank 6
Star Social Link: Rank 7
We're finally getting a good volume of Portable exclusive links in a single video! Ken's also in the Social Link pool now, giving us more to do at night. As mentioned previously, I did mess up slightly with Fuuka's link. You'll want to pick option 2 when she gives you the Rice Ball.
In Reload
Lovers Social Link: Rank 2
Koromaru's Linked Episode: Episode 2 Completed
Aigis Hang Outs: Gardening 3/3 Reading 1/3
Shiji Hang Outs: Cooking 1/3 Gardening 0/3
Not too much going on in Reload, but we have started Shinji's night time hang outs. Shinji's characteristic isn't that helpful, all truth be told, but we do have some fringe perks that come up from completing them as soon as possible, so he'll be seeing a lot of floor time in the coming videos!
Supplemental: Shinjiro Aragaki FES/Portable
"Adios, asshole."
Level 99 Stats
ST: 84
MA: 52
EN: 69(nice)
AG: 54
LU: 45
Shinji has no weakness OR resistances. Remember that in non-Reload versions of Persona 3, the resistances of SEES members reduce damage by 90% instead of 50%, so this isn't necessarily a strict benefit.
Skills
Regenerate 1, Fatal End, Counter: Starts With
Evil Smile: Level 39
Counterstrike: Level 42
Power Charge: Level 50
Blade of Fury: Level 52
Heat Wave: Level 53
High Counter: Level 55
Deathbound: Level 60
Regenerate 2: Level 65
Akasha Arts: Level 72
God's Hand: Level 77
The aloof and literally too-cool-for-school bad boy has finally returned to SEES! As you'd expect from a guy you primarily know for his headbutting ability at this point in the story, Shinji is the premiere physical bruiser of SEES. Aside from Evil Smile, all his learned skills are in the interest of either doling out physical pain, or aiding him in doing so. That said, Power Charge is pretty bad in these versions, the Regenerate skills heal far too little to matter, and Shinji's LU is awful so he will almost never actually land Evil Smile should you let him use it, so you're really just focusing on the damage dealing skills he has. And he does quite well with them! While he only narrowly edges out Junpei for damage, he's a much better crowd clearer than Aigis once he picks up Heat Wave. End game, his God's Hand is one of the single strongest thing that can be thrown out by anyone in SEES, and High Counter essentially bakes in a 15% physical resistance to him as he'll randomly fling Shadows' own attacks right back at them. Shinji has a bit of a slow start when the only physical move he has is the already failing Fatal End, but it's not too difficult to make/find a mighty axe for him to work that high ST until he picks up his multi-target moves. Before we get onto version specific things to keep in mind for Shinji, there are a couple amusing peculiarities about him. Like Koromaru, he doesn't have an in-story upgrade and instead has the full breadth of his skill list to learn from the jump. Another funny thing is tied to how Persona 3 handled its party members learning skills prior to Reload: Since you don't get to choose what you party members forget and they almost always replace lower tier skills with their functional superior even if they have an empty slot, Shinji is the only character who ends the game with just 7 skills instead of 8 (God's Hand, Akasha Arts, Deathbound, High Counter, Regenerate 2, Power Charge and Evil Smile). Not sure why they couldn't think of anything else to add in there, but it tickles my funny bone if nothing else.
In FES
AI control strikes again with Power Charge being a pain in the ass to deal with. If left to his own devices, Shinji has a bad tendency to waste his turns upping it, even if he could outright kill the enemy without it. While he has a low SP pool, he has literally nothing else to do with it but Evil Smile, so he can waste quite a bit of time doing it. Luckily, Tactics like Conserve SP shut it off while still allowing him to use high powered skills like Deathbound, so it's pretty easy to work around. Past that, Shinji is fairly solid if a bit less versatile than Junpei due to lacking a useful buff skill like Junpei has. He blows Aigis out of the water for multiple reasons. In addition to having way higher ST and good enough EN+HP, Shinji picks up stronger attacks sooner and has one more critical thing Aigis lacks: an elemental weapon! By fusing the Persona Thor into a Nihil Axe, you can create the Elec element hammer Mjolnir, giving Shinji a means to deal non-physical damage backed by his mammoth ST. Mjolnir is even stronger than Gae Bolg with an attack value of 340 while similarly having the relevant elemental boost ability baked in. By kitting out Shinji with Indra Bracers and casting Sukukaja on him to offset Mjolnir's low accuracy, Akihiko can go screw as far as damage is concerned as Shinji becomes the ultimate Elec attacker of SEES. Literally the only thing that trumps him is the Protag using Thunder Reign with the same boosts... or Mjolnir also. And hey, why not double up if it's effective? I've already demonstrated how good that can be with The Hermit. This bit of versatility is what really puts Shinji over the edge, and makes him a good fit for a team that's trying to maximize its damage output.
In Portable
All things that were good about Shinji originally still apply here, with the added bonuses that you don't have to wrangle his AI and he can also be an item caddy should the need arise. Like Koromaru, lacking an in-story upgrade means Shinji also joins with the baked in Endure passive that all party members pick up in Portable. There's also a minor sidequest reward you can get for frequent use of Shinji, but we'll get into the weeds on that later. Just a very straight-forward and easy to use party member!
All in all, Shinji has a pretty modest start as a sturdy anchor that does reliable damage but has limited ability to support the team. All at once though, he explodes upwards into the best non-protagonist fighter on the team by a mile. He picks up Heat Wave at level 52, and Thor is a level 53 Persona, so picking both these up around the same time suddenly makes Shinji the real God of Thunder. He'll help you tear through mobs if your all-out attack doesn't cut it, and clap the enemies like thunder in boss fights. He's an excellent party member, and I'm looking forward to getting good use out of him in the future.
"Adios, asshole."
Level 99 Stats
ST: 84
MA: 52
EN: 69(nice)
AG: 54
LU: 45
Shinji has no weakness OR resistances. Remember that in non-Reload versions of Persona 3, the resistances of SEES members reduce damage by 90% instead of 50%, so this isn't necessarily a strict benefit.
Skills
Regenerate 1, Fatal End, Counter: Starts With
Evil Smile: Level 39
Counterstrike: Level 42
Power Charge: Level 50
Blade of Fury: Level 52
Heat Wave: Level 53
High Counter: Level 55
Deathbound: Level 60
Regenerate 2: Level 65
Akasha Arts: Level 72
God's Hand: Level 77
The aloof and literally too-cool-for-school bad boy has finally returned to SEES! As you'd expect from a guy you primarily know for his headbutting ability at this point in the story, Shinji is the premiere physical bruiser of SEES. Aside from Evil Smile, all his learned skills are in the interest of either doling out physical pain, or aiding him in doing so. That said, Power Charge is pretty bad in these versions, the Regenerate skills heal far too little to matter, and Shinji's LU is awful so he will almost never actually land Evil Smile should you let him use it, so you're really just focusing on the damage dealing skills he has. And he does quite well with them! While he only narrowly edges out Junpei for damage, he's a much better crowd clearer than Aigis once he picks up Heat Wave. End game, his God's Hand is one of the single strongest thing that can be thrown out by anyone in SEES, and High Counter essentially bakes in a 15% physical resistance to him as he'll randomly fling Shadows' own attacks right back at them. Shinji has a bit of a slow start when the only physical move he has is the already failing Fatal End, but it's not too difficult to make/find a mighty axe for him to work that high ST until he picks up his multi-target moves. Before we get onto version specific things to keep in mind for Shinji, there are a couple amusing peculiarities about him. Like Koromaru, he doesn't have an in-story upgrade and instead has the full breadth of his skill list to learn from the jump. Another funny thing is tied to how Persona 3 handled its party members learning skills prior to Reload: Since you don't get to choose what you party members forget and they almost always replace lower tier skills with their functional superior even if they have an empty slot, Shinji is the only character who ends the game with just 7 skills instead of 8 (God's Hand, Akasha Arts, Deathbound, High Counter, Regenerate 2, Power Charge and Evil Smile). Not sure why they couldn't think of anything else to add in there, but it tickles my funny bone if nothing else.
In FES
AI control strikes again with Power Charge being a pain in the ass to deal with. If left to his own devices, Shinji has a bad tendency to waste his turns upping it, even if he could outright kill the enemy without it. While he has a low SP pool, he has literally nothing else to do with it but Evil Smile, so he can waste quite a bit of time doing it. Luckily, Tactics like Conserve SP shut it off while still allowing him to use high powered skills like Deathbound, so it's pretty easy to work around. Past that, Shinji is fairly solid if a bit less versatile than Junpei due to lacking a useful buff skill like Junpei has. He blows Aigis out of the water for multiple reasons. In addition to having way higher ST and good enough EN+HP, Shinji picks up stronger attacks sooner and has one more critical thing Aigis lacks: an elemental weapon! By fusing the Persona Thor into a Nihil Axe, you can create the Elec element hammer Mjolnir, giving Shinji a means to deal non-physical damage backed by his mammoth ST. Mjolnir is even stronger than Gae Bolg with an attack value of 340 while similarly having the relevant elemental boost ability baked in. By kitting out Shinji with Indra Bracers and casting Sukukaja on him to offset Mjolnir's low accuracy, Akihiko can go screw as far as damage is concerned as Shinji becomes the ultimate Elec attacker of SEES. Literally the only thing that trumps him is the Protag using Thunder Reign with the same boosts... or Mjolnir also. And hey, why not double up if it's effective? I've already demonstrated how good that can be with The Hermit. This bit of versatility is what really puts Shinji over the edge, and makes him a good fit for a team that's trying to maximize its damage output.
In Portable
All things that were good about Shinji originally still apply here, with the added bonuses that you don't have to wrangle his AI and he can also be an item caddy should the need arise. Like Koromaru, lacking an in-story upgrade means Shinji also joins with the baked in Endure passive that all party members pick up in Portable. There's also a minor sidequest reward you can get for frequent use of Shinji, but we'll get into the weeds on that later. Just a very straight-forward and easy to use party member!
All in all, Shinji has a pretty modest start as a sturdy anchor that does reliable damage but has limited ability to support the team. All at once though, he explodes upwards into the best non-protagonist fighter on the team by a mile. He picks up Heat Wave at level 52, and Thor is a level 53 Persona, so picking both these up around the same time suddenly makes Shinji the real God of Thunder. He'll help you tear through mobs if your all-out attack doesn't cut it, and clap the enemies like thunder in boss fights. He's an excellent party member, and I'm looking forward to getting good use out of him in the future.