Memento Mori. Let's Play Persona 3!
Part 54 is out! FES is a remarkably mundane affair, with the sole notable event being Keisuke's maxout, though Yukari is next in line. On the Portable front, we get an absolute explosion of maxouts, as Koromaru, Ken, and Hidetoshi are all done and dusted as of this video, with Ryoji rapidly shooting up the ranks as well. Reload sees us unlocking a new option that will make completing all remaining social links a breeze, and also sees more development for the mysterious Ryoji. It's kind of funny how little Ryoji does in he PS2 versions of the game. You can talk to him after school, but otherwise he just kind of bums around. We're due for the school vacation by the end of this video, but the eve of the trip is the perfect time for some Tartarus exploration. Guess what we're doing next video!
Extra Notes
In FES and Portable
-I've already made some movement on Tartarus in FES, and the spoils of war are sweet! For starters, we're able to pick up Odin now, who has one of the most broken spells in the game in Thunder Reign. To reiterate, Thunder Reign is the strongest Elec spell in the game that has a 100% chance to shock anything not immune to the Shock status. Which as far as I know, only the final boss is immune to that status. Thunder Reign allows you to set up for guaranteed crits, which can easily lead to follow-up All-Out Attacks dumpstering the enemy. It does have the limitation that non-story battles have random turn orders, which can wall out the best of it, but it's still a fantastic spell and is the preferred to cheese the Reaper prior to Portable just letting you trade for Armageddon. We'll definitely be maxing out Odin's MA in FES and Portable.
-We also pick up Siegfried. Siegfried is good for a different reason in this version of the game: Vorpal Blade. Vorpal Blade is an AoE physical skill with nearly the highest attack power of any physical skill in the game and a very unique property. When the character using Vorpal Blade is in the Great status, the damage of the skill is doubled. This is an incredible boost, and at 99 ST, Siegfried can post numbers comparable to Surt when you're in Great condition. Which will nearly be always in FES due to the Late Night timeslot giving us an opportunity to always rest, and I can easily fit in time for it in Portable. Siegfried also picks up Arms Master to halve the HP cost of physical skills, so pairing that with Cool Breeze can make an enemy clearer nearly as effective as Surt, albeit with a time limit in FES since the Great status will eventually turn to Tired. Siegfried also picks up 2-Handed Sword Mastery in FES/Weapon Mastery in Portable, giving him an additional physical boosting option. It's an interesting spread of skills since direct damage boosts to Physical attacks don't otherwise exist in the non-Reload version skills of the game.
-Since we're never going to see it in action, there is another skill that gets a condition boost in the game: Weary Thrust. Weary Thrust is a single target Strike move that gets a 50% damage boost... when you're Tired. Since you get a 25% damage reduction when you're tired anyway, and Weary Thrust's base power is about 80% of Vorpal Blade to begin with, combining all that essentially gets you a Non-Boosted Single Target Vorpal Blade. Weary Thrust is complete ass, don't bother with it.
-Aside from their direct prospects as Personae in combat, Odin and Siegfried allow us to fuse a couple good weapons. Odin, rather fittingly, creates Gungnir. Gungnir, in addition to boasting a solid 310 attack power and good accuracy, conveys the Elec boost ability though it does not have an Elec element on its physical attack like Gae Bolg. Its main purpose is to pair with Indra Bracers to maximize Ken's Ziodyne damage, which is a situationally useful thing to do. Siegfried, meanwhile, creates the 2-Handed Sword Balmung. Balmung has 310 attack power compared to Lavaeteinn's 340 (although it does have better accuracy) but it provides an extremely hearty +100 HP to the equipper. It's not super good for Junpei, but it's great for the protag in FES. It's basically a Legion weapon that doesn't gimp our All-Out Attack! Since Surt now has his own stack of Fire Boost and Fire Amp+Ragnarok, I don't really need Lavaeteinn on the protag anymore.
-Over in Portable, we're almost completely kitted out with the new and improved Maid set, but unfortunately Aigis is going to have to wait a bit as her outfit was moved to the Oden Juice request. We're going to be completing that after we do the main Tartarus trip for this cycle.
-Ryoji's version of the Fortune link has a unique rub: You MUST advance it every time you're given an opportunity to do so or it will stall out and end. This includes accepting his Sunday date, which is actually a bona fide link event rather than an opportunity to increase his link points. There is also a moment within the dialogue of a future event where you can choose to terminate the link and stop it at it's current rank via dialogue choice. Pretty strange!
-For some reason, despite it being a normal event day for the student council, I couldn't finish the link on 11/11. They let me do it the following Monday though. Not sure what was going on there, but it means I can get Odin during the Tartarus expedition for Portable like I did in FES. Just as I had planned!
In Reload
-We unlock a fantastically helpful new way of gaining social link points in Reload: The dating site url. This essentially functions as a relationship fortune we can use at night. Since we now literally have nothing but Arcade games and the scant few boosting softwares we have left as far as nightly activities go, we no longer need to ever worry about going out of our way to get link points for social links. Stock up on about 10-12 of these and you should be set for every remaining link in the game.
-Completing Fuuka's social link nets us Scathach, a weird generalist who picks up Myriad Arrows, Mabufudyne and Magarudyne, plus some passives I don't care much about. She is one of the options for getting Auto-Mataru, though you need a Lovers card to get it on fusion. Since Atavaka is level 72 and she's level 75, the former is probably the avenue I'll take towards getting that skill online.
-We also gain access to Yurlungur, a Persona remarkable in how unremarkable he is. He picks up Maziodyne and Makougaon, plus a bunch of Evade skills that I really can't be bothered to care about.
-I'll demonstrate this eventually, but it hasn't really come up at this point what you should do if you deleted a party member's skill and maybe you're regretting. Be Blue V is now a service that can restore lost skills to your party member, if you're so inclined to respec them in minor ways. It's not super helpful since only a handful of characters really force tough choices like that, but it is there if you did some ill-advised, like deleted Marakunda off of Mitsuru or something.
Social Progress
In FES
Temperance Social Link: Rank 9
Fortune Social Link: Max Rank
Lovers Social Link: Rank 9
Star Social Link: Rank 6
We've got Fortune maxed out, giving us access to Norn. Norn is notable in being probably the last Persona I have any serious interest in stat maxing in FES and Portable, as she's the last elemental specialist we'll be seeing for awhile that is both close to my current level and can feasibly have her main attack stat maxed out before the game finishes without serious gem farming.
In Portable
Strength Social Link: Max Rank
Justice Social Link: Max Rank
Emperor Social Link: Max Rank
Fortune Social Link: Max Rank
We're hitting an interesting point in Portable. We've maxed out all the night links in the game, and for that matter we've also maxed out all the out-of-school links save for Akinari, and all but one of the FemC exclusive links. There is going to come a point very soon where there will be literally nothing for me to talk about in Portable save for Tartarus trips. This results in an amusing situation where the FemC's version of the story exacerbates a pretty infamous problem with Persona 3's late game.
In Reload
High Priestess Social Link: Max Rank
Temperance Social Link: Max Rank
Fortune Social Link: Rank 6
Sun Social Link: Rank 8
Ken's Linked Episode: Episode 3 Complete
Ryoji's Linked Episode: Episode 2 Complete
The max outs are coming fast and heavy in Reload as well! That said, we will be picking up a new link very soon that's going to take some of our focus. With the new dating site url, we're never going to have a moment where we aren't advancing something.
Continuing the stream playthrough of Vanilla, it will begin soon!
Interesting Things I Learned This Stream
-I'm not 100% sure how Tanaka's daytime availability works. Days off, maybe? I should pay more attention to that next time.
-Surt is available relatively sooner in this version, at level 50 instead of 52. And he has the same skill list in FES, so while we can't stat max him as easily he's still an easy to create powerhouse.
-Having a much less dominant offense on the protag, I appreciate the options I can use for my other characters as well as the value of the support options of the protag himself. The Knights in this version gave me quite a bit of trouble until I reigned myself in and made better use of my defensive skills.
-Virus Breath is really interesting in this version of the game, dealing 25% of the enemy's current HP in damage and attempting to inflict poison. It's a pretty good battle opener in these trio bosses for Tartarus, and gave me a whole new appreciation for Mot.
-Jin and Takaya actually got a chance to fight, so I heard some fight dialogue from them for the first time ever lol
Interesting Things I Learned This Stream
-I'm not 100% sure how Tanaka's daytime availability works. Days off, maybe? I should pay more attention to that next time.
-Surt is available relatively sooner in this version, at level 50 instead of 52. And he has the same skill list in FES, so while we can't stat max him as easily he's still an easy to create powerhouse.
-Having a much less dominant offense on the protag, I appreciate the options I can use for my other characters as well as the value of the support options of the protag himself. The Knights in this version gave me quite a bit of trouble until I reigned myself in and made better use of my defensive skills.
-Virus Breath is really interesting in this version of the game, dealing 25% of the enemy's current HP in damage and attempting to inflict poison. It's a pretty good battle opener in these trio bosses for Tartarus, and gave me a whole new appreciation for Mot.
-Jin and Takaya actually got a chance to fight, so I heard some fight dialogue from them for the first time ever lol
The next supplemental video is up, compiling the previous 2 main parts since just part 53 would have been a tad short. We have the Elizabeth/Theo dates here, plus a smattering of max outs or people getting close to max outs. We've been pretty light on Portable content for these as we've mostly had exclusive links for Portable to cover as of late, but we will see a new link that will give Portable some floor time in these videos soon enough. At least, when we're not on break from school since we have no out-of-school links for Portable anymore save for Akinari. I've got most of the Tartarus footage recorded now, just need to save some time next weekend to get Portable recorded. Next time we'll be covering the first half of the new block, Harabah!
Part 55 is out! We're left kind of rudderless as far as the Dark Hour is concerned, but no reason we can't still explore Tartarus to keep ourselves primed for any potential disasters. This moon cycle sees us getting access to Haraba, which is a somewhat interesting block in the older versions of the game (if gaudy) but is fairly standard in Reload. It's also pretty widely disliked due to an eye-straining aesthetic and being fairly lengthy in a portion of the game that is already pretty often criticized for dragging it's heels. Fortunately, in the context of this LP the exploration will be broken up with a vacation in the middle!
Extra Notes
In FES and Portable
-Unlike previously explored Blocks which were divided into two halves opened up over two moon cycles, we actually have full access to Haraba. For the first time since Thebel, we have more than two boss fights we can do this month with 5 altogether, though the block does have an informal point where it transitions into a second half. Considering that, I'll limit my exploration to the first "half" of Haraba since otherwise we'd be bogged down with Tartarus for several videos in a row. Even though we can fully explore Haraba right now, there are still several quests that unlock next Moon Cycle that cannot be done right now. We also have until 12/29 to get the last old document, so it's not a big deal if we don't go all the way to the end.
-We'll be facing off against 3 bosses altogether this cycle. Note that at this point, boss fights in Tartarus are pretty quick affairs: either you have a refined offense that crushes them within about 3 turns, or they do the same to you and it's back to the drawing board.
-As covered previously, we pick up Odin and Siegfried over the course of these trips, very useful Personae who are well worth stat maxing due to the ease with which we can set them up for the specialties. Like Surt, Siegfried comes in with everything he needs by default, while Odin takes a little extra effort to get Elec Boost. Hokuto Seikun and Byakko are good Personae within his level bracket that pick up that skill, if you're curious.
-By fusing Thor into Kumbhanda, and then using Kumbhanda to create a Raphael, that's an easy chain you can do to get a Persona that has all auto-team buffs. I only get step two accomplished in FES and Portable during this video, but the last step is another major goal for this cycle. Raphael is level 61, which you should get pretty close to through normal gameplay and will only need a little extra work to put yourself at the right level.
-fuckin fusion accidents man
-We can finally upgrade Aigis and Yukari's fusion weapons, and that should probably have them set for a good while. At level 60, you can create Bishamonten as a new option for Tower weapons. It's not super critical, but it will juice up our All-out attacks more, and Aigis would definitely appreciate the attack power as her physical skills are crazy out of date.
In Reload
-Haraba is much more conventional in Reload, for better or worse. Actually, it's actually pretty light on things compared to previous Blocks really. Only 4 bosses, none of them are back-to-back, and the Monad Passage is also only two fights. The fights themselves don't necessarily task us with moving mountains either.
-We now have access to the Hanged Man major arcana in Shuffle Time, which gives us an incense when drawn. The higher up you are in Tartarus, the better the incense you get, so it can be undesirable to take this if you're doing my method of nuking lower floor Monad Doors to get Major Arcana cards with no trouble.
-We're pretty flush with cash and not a whole lot to spend it on at this point, so feel free to spam the compendium to scoop up completion percentage. It's much more affordable here, and it's very easy now to get funds to fuel your fusion drives. We finally get the upgrade to the Protag's characteristic, meaning we've officially maxed out all characteristics!
-We get access to a Theurgy that I could have gotten before Scarlet Havoc, but it's pretty situational so I wasn't super pressed about it. By having Decarabia and Forneus registered, you can cast Best Friends as your Theurgy. This used to be Heat Riser in the old versions of the game, but here it instead casts Charge and Concentrate on a single target. Only a handful of characters can actually make effective use of this, so how useful this is to you depends on how heavily you're investing in said characters. Once Akihiko has Elec Boost+Elec Amp and God's Hand, he's an amazing recipient for this. Believe it or not, Junpei can also make this work. Outside of them though, the rest of the character's only specialize in one attack type, so I'm not really sure if it's worth it to juice up Mitsuru's Neuro slash or Yukari's normal attack. The protagonist can also cast it on himself, but this is very dubious over having Koromaru or Yukari juice him up so he can carry that buff into a different Theurgy instead.
-This trip went a long way to show how cracked Scarlet Havoc is. Most of the boss fights were so short, I legitimately had trouble finding them on the timeline for editing this video over a normal encounter.
-Once you've had your fill of fusing, there is one cash threshold we want to save up for: At this point we want to store 500k to purchase the ailment immunity accessory from Club Escapade. By having this on at least one character, we can shut down every single status ailment in the game since we now have multi-targeting items that replicate any status cure you could desire. Luckily, Rarity Fortunes make it quite easy to get the treasure to acquire that kind of cash.