Memento Mori. Let's Play Persona 3! [Finished]
And after a longer than expected break, we're back on! It's time to tackle The Answer, the post-script scenario of dubious quality relative to the main game. I tease, I do think there is quite a bit to like in The Answer, but whether or not everything it does lands... well, we'll get there when we get there. This first part is fairly non-indicative for what the side mode is going to have in store for us, as we have a solid 40 minute block of exposition with one scripted battle to break things up in the middle. I don't get to say too much here, but as we progress I will likely have to dig deep to find things to talk about as The Answer is much more gameplay driven than The Journey, which is also a big root of some of the distaste for it, particularly the FES iteration. We'll get more into details on how to approach this mode as well as the unique aspects to it over The Journey once we get to a point where we can actually play.
For those who are curious, the first cutscene compilation for the FES version of the Answer is up! Now like I've said, the start of The Answer is by far the most cutscene dense portion of the game, with even the backloaded ending sequence getting broken up with boss fights here and there, so I figured I'd just get the opening stuff out of the way as soon as possible. I'll be uploading these a bit more sporadically going forward since it'll be awhile before we end up seeing enough voice acted cutscenes in FES to make up even a 30 minute video. Some thoughts I had while watching this back myself!
-The quality of the animated cutscenes in The Answer are a marked step up from what was featured in The Journey. While the anime cutscenes definitely had style points up till now, they also featured rough, almost sketch quality art a lot of the time and characters were about as consistently on model as a Ren & Stimpy cartoon. The anime scenes here both keep the style and maintain a good degree of consistency! The Answer features far fewer animated scenes than The Journey, so I guess they were able to ensure the ones it does have look as good as possible.
-Fuuka's original VA, Mela Lee, notably stepped up her game for this storyline and actually sounds pretty great in the story cutscenes. Not sure if she was just able to get into the role more or was given better direction, but it is a shame this was her last outing as the character (aside from a handful of line in Portable I guess). Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your tastes), her battle dialogue is largely the same as it is in the Journey, so the heat of battle sends her right back to dull surprise.
-It's kind of funny that Ken is the first one to suggest trusting in Metis' intentions when he was very nearly killed by her just a day before in-universe. It makes sense since letting go of revenge and forgiveness were a big part of Ken's arc in the main game, but it is still kind of amusing that he's just about the ONLY non-Aigis character to go to bat for her.
-I'm not really sure if Mitsuru's reasoning for letting Aigis lead really checks out, it would probably make more sense if Mitsuru herself did it, but protagonist privileges so whatever. There are a few plot turns in The Answer that feel really arbitrary just to carry the narrative forward, and this one of the more amusingly mundane ones.
Part 79 is out! With the establishing scenes out of the way, we now dive into the meat of The Answer. Last video was almost nothing but cutscenes, this one had less than two minutes of voiced dialogue that wasn't battle barks across two games! The Answer is probably the most gameplay oriented Persona has been since the original PS1 game, and certainly it has the highest gameplay-to-story ratio of any game in the modern era. For most people this proves to be a bad thing, though my take on that is that it's more of an issue due to some obnoxious ways the existing game systems were pared down compared to The Journey rather than the core game being bad. FES is definitely far more adversely affected by this, but it'll be a little bit before we can get into why. Regardless, it's time to tackle the first realm of the Abyss of Time: Malebolge!
Extra Notes
-We been down this road before so I won't bore you with the basics, but it is a good idea to be aware of what our current line up is capable of. Definitely the most robust character starting out is Akihiko, who still has his good mixed attacking options in Zio skills and physicals plus support in his healing and debuff options. Yukari is currently our only option for multi-targeting healing, so that's important to keep in mind. Ken has been refocused in the early game to be more of a pure attacker, funnily enough. He's the only one besides Metis to have a tier 2 elemental spell to start, a strong physical option in Cruel Attack in FES and Arrow Rain (a wholly new addition to his skill list!) in The Answer as well as Light coverage. Ken will eventually fold into his generalist healer build that he had in The Journey, but for right now he's a surprisingly good bit of extra sauce for your damage.
-Aigis only starts her Wildcard life with Orpheus, but thankfully we'll pretty quickly get Persona cards to appear in Shuffle Time so we can start rebuilding our Compendium. I'm not going to go too much into Persona building for Aigis right now since it'll be a bit before we can really do anything meaningful with the Velvet Room, but know that Reload has added in a bunch of things that assuage a lot of the pain involved in Persona building compared to FES. Things are going to rapidly become complicated in FES for reasons anyone familiar with the OG version of The Answer will know all too well.
-Metis is pretty much tailor made for this story and as such it would behoove you to keep her around at all times especially considering certain end game fights. Metis is a phenomenal physical attacker that also has an incredibly diverse skill pool. Not since Teddie have I had a character force such tough choices on me for the final skill list with her Reload version. She also lacks a weakness, making her safe to bring to any fight. In Reload, she's our only option for Ice coverage, which doesn't come until slightly later in FES.
-I'll be writing a more detailed post on skill list changes to other party members later on, as well as a more detailed breakdown on Metis.
-Everyone has lost their second Theurgy as well as their Characteristic, so we're back to mostly just having beat sticks for Theurgy choices and no special traits to differentiate the party. Note that Aigis begins the story with Cadenza at her disposal, and has most of the Theurgies the protagonist had by the end of the game plus a couple unique additions that swap out for specific Theurgies the protagonist had.
-You'd do well to take fights seriously again, especially in Reload's Heartless mode. While we're not quite back to square one, we are fighting mid-game enemies with early game loadouts, more or less. We don't have the overpowered options to call on anymore, so even random battles will sometimes see deliberation on my part for what the best way to proceed with the fight is.
-Enemies give A LOT more experience in The Answer, so if you find yourself struggling early on, do not hesitate to stop and grind a few levels. You can make pretty rapid progress when drawing Wand cards.
-The weird way Episode Aigis goes about dividing the dorm and the Abyss of Time means that you can freely reset your Major Arcana draws and "farm" them later on in the game, if you don't mind sacrificing Arcana Burst. Right now, the resource boon of Arcana Burst means we should delay as much as possible when it comes to returning to the dorm to heal, but once stat boosters enter the mix it's not a terrible idea to just leave any heal once you reach Arcana Burst. This is especially abusable considering we have Floor Jump now. Regardless of what you decide to do, there's essentially no point in ever spending Twilight Fragments on healing clocks in this version since it's still a 7 fragment price tag per heal. Not worth it when you can just leave the Abyss for a full heal, and there are MUCH better things your fragments can be spent on later.
-In The Answer, you're simply fully healed upon returning to The Abyss, same as the Tartarus Lobby. Note that you can't modify your party in the Desert of Doors, you must return to the Dorm to swap people around.
-Not necessarily making the game harder but more annoying, there are no proper checkpoints before boss encounters, just save points. If you leave to heal, you have to make the whole trek back to the Boss floor. Early on with how limited SP is, you may just find yourself FORCED to make a trip like this. Honestly, SP management is a lot tougher in The Answer in general for, again, reasons we'll get into later so this never stops being a potential issue.
Supplemental: Character Differences in The Answer, or Old Dogs, New Tricks
Going into The Answer/Episode Aigis, everyone is set back many levels, (with their upgraded Personae, as obtaining those are mandatory story events in this game) starting them off around level 25 to the mid 30's in this storyline.. This is actually untreaded ground for someone like Ken, who has a lower base level in this mode than he did in the Journey. Now while the characters are generally just scaled back to match what they would be like at the same level in The Journey, there are some rebalanced learn levels for a number of skills, and some new additions entirely. While characters ultimately fold back into the archetypes they occupied at the end of The Journey, the actual path there can see them flexing onto entirely different roles than you'd ever be liable to use them for in the main game. Let's go over some of these changes, starting with the less significant modifications in FES!
In FES
For some universal changes in this version, as mentioned previously everyone has their upgraded Persona, at a much lower level than you're ever likely to see them at in a normal playthrough. This means they enjoy their improved resistances from the jump, although in this version of the game that's always been a negligible boon. You have your full spread of Tactics options unlocked by default in the Answer, so you have full control (or as close to it as you can have the PS2 versions of Persona 3) of your party from the beginning as well. And this isn't something that actually affects gameplay, but everyone has a new victory animation for when the battle ends on their turn, which is a cute detail. Onto individual changes!
Yukari: Actually completely identical to how she would be at the same level in The Journey, and she learns all her skills in the same order at the same level. That said, of your starting cast she is much more complacent in the role of dedicated healer, being the only one who starts with Media and Diarama. Ken needs to get a few levels to even have any healing options in Diarama and Recarm, and Aigis has several things to grapple with when it comes to Persona Fusion in this mode, so Yukari is generally your best source of healing for a good chunk of this storyline.
Akihiko: Same as Yukari, no direct changes here, same skills in the same order. This mode actually sees Akihiko pretty strongly nerfed from the offset though due to circumstance. He only has Tier 1 magic when you're dealing with enemies that you really want to hit with Tier 2 magic, his debuff specialization is much less useful here as The Answer hardly ever tasks you with a single strong foe for a boss, and there's an initial lack of access to accessories to augment his offense further. I'd dare say he's actually pretty bad at the beginning of the mode, and you should probably keep him benched until later when you can quickly grind him up to his good abilities. The EXP curve in The Answer is much different than it is in The Journey, so it's a lot easier and faster to quickly catch up characters in levels.
Ken: The first character who actually gets some very substantial changes. The Answer was the first attempt at buffing Ken to make him more appealing to people over just using Yukari for healing all the time. Almost all of Ken's skills are learned at lower levels, and usually in a different order. Ken's early game offense is also comparable to Metis in strength, due to him having access to a Tier 2 spell and a mid-game physical skill right off the rip. This puts Ken into more of a dedicated, and very flexible, attacking role for a good chunk of the game. He also quickly picks up some good healing options, and while it is still a little bit of a process for him to get multi-target healing, he's a much more competitive party member in other areas until that point. To quickly run down the learn level changes for him,
Diarama: 37->29
Recarm: 42->32(!)
Hamaon: 40->35
Hama Boost: 54->40(!)
Vile Assault: 59->46(!)
Mediarama, Ziodyne and Spear Master retain their default learn levels, 51, 55 and 65 respectively.
Diarahan: 62->60
Samarecarm: 73->71
Mediarahan: 78->76
Yeah they really go all in on attacker Ken for this mode, surprised Ziodyne wasn't also moved up. While he technically learns his best healing earlier, realistically it's still going to be learned at the same time it was for The Journey: in preparation for the final boss. Still, it's cool to see some effort put into making the little guy stand out more, and he's definitely one of the strongest picks starting out in the Abyss of Time.
Junpei: Still one of the best party members in the game, with relatively small but significant changes. For starters, he still has his unique Spring of Life passive, making him a fair deal tankier than anyone else in the early game. Second, Marakukaja was moved up the learn list, going from a level 44 skill to a level 34 one, which he can pick up pretty quickly after he rejoins the party. Marakukaja is a fantastic utility option, so it is much appreciated Junpei just about starts with it. Finally, one really weird change is that Brave Blade is swapped out for Deathbound. I really have no idea what they were going for with this because Junpei STILL learns Vorpal Blade. Incidentally, Vorpal Blade was already kind of a brick in Junpei's learn list, it is doubly so here as the Great condition flat out does not exist in The Answer so it can NEVER benefit from the double damage bonus. Deathbound does have a much better crit rate than Vorpal Blade, so that's kind of cool. Everything else is learned at the same time. Junpei is still the GOAT.
Koromaru: Similar to Ken although not as sweeping, a lot of Koromaru's skills are learned a lot earlier to make him more complacent in his role as an attacker, just with Fire and Darkness instead. For starters, he just has Mudoon instead of Mudo to begin with. Maragion, Fire Boost and Mamudoon were learned at 38, 48 and 71 respectively, are now scooped up at 34, 39 and 49(!!!). Fire Amp is also learned ever so slightly earlier, 75 instead of 77 which matters the same as Ken learning his best healing earlier (not at all). All the things that were good about Koromaru in The Journey are even better here, as he is well ahead of the curve compared to everyone else when it comes to Tier 3 magic, getting Agidyne at a cool level 45 still. Koromaru is still not my preferred character in this version of the game, but his options are relatively stronger here due to Aigis being a lot more constrained in her options than the MC was.
Mitsuru: Taking us back to Yukari and Akihiko, Mitsuru is completely identical to how she is in The Journey. This actually results in her being pretty terrible in this mode. Mitsuru was always something of an early game powerhouse who falls off badly in the mid-game, so it's really hard to appreciate anything she can do when we basically start in the mid-game where her abilities are already pretty lack luster. It's insult to injury that she's the last person to rejoin when you've already gotten other characters who were buffed considerably. You keep her in mind for fights where ice coverage might help and that's about it.
Metis: Will get her own post, but just wanted to have her here to make it clear I didn't forget!
Aigis: Aigis is now our protagonist! This change comes with mechanical downgrades both in and out of universe. In universe, she can no longer go into Orgia Mode, which you probably wouldn't want to do anyway since removing control of the one person you directly take charge of and you lose if they die is a pretty bad idea, but this is recognized as a nerf within the nebulously defined power scaling of the game world. Out of universe, Aigis can only use gun type weapons still, limiting her to the Pierce physical type in normal attacking options, compared to the MC's multi-melee mastery. Aigis also has to grapple with several dropped game mechanics in The Answer that give her a rougher go of things than the MC had, and we will be seeing this in due time, rest assured. While Metis is a robot type unit with her own Orgia Mode, she doesn't really functionally replace the Aigis featured in The Journey, who is just dropped from the roster entirely after the first battle.
Fuuka: Fuuka has unlearned all her fairly underwhelming upgrades, and gets them back at the same time in the same order as she did in The Journey. The one interesting thing you're liable to only ever find out here is that Oracle is learned at Level 50. Fuuka is usually well past that point in The Journey once Juno unlocks unless you're doing a low-level challenge or are extremely lazy about going to Tartarus.
In Reload
The snap back in Episode Aigis hits characters a bit harder here, as Characteristics are dropped and Second Theurgies are reverse-pathos'd out of everyone's skill list. These things come back eventually, but the way they went about it for this mode is, frankly, kind of silly and characters regain these things in an arbitrary order. This results in some characters getting better options much sooner than others, though it's not the biggest deal in the world. As for individual changes,
Yukari: Yukari is remarkably shittier in Episode Aigis, which is especially funny because I don't particularly care for using her in the main game in the first place. All of her skills have had their learn levels greatly inflated, and she legitimately starts with half the options she'd have at the same level in the main game. I'm not going to list the individual level changes, but just take any skill she learns in The Journey and add 10 to the learn level, and that's where almost all her skills are at in Episode Aigis. She also does not get any new skills in this mode. Absolutely dreadful, Jesus.
Akihiko: Same as Yukari, a lot of his stuff is learned weirdly late but it's not as egregious as Yukari's. Akihiko learns his stuff about 5-6 levels later than normal compared to Yukari's 10, and he also doesn't pick up any new options. His Characteristic is also one of the last ones to reach its maximum, making him a fair deal weaker for most of Episode Aigis than he is in The Journey. Like Yukari, I was never super hot on Akihiko to begin with, and this mode makes him even less appealing to me. But hey, you have to use at least one of them starting out, so it comes down to whether you prefer a healer or a stronger attacker.
Ken: Continuing with the theme of making Ken more of an attacker, in Episode Aigis he gets a new skill pick up in Arrow Rain, which later upgrades into Myriad Arrows at level 43. This is a pretty cool extra option for him, especially in the early game where you really want to have cheap and renewable options to tag multiple enemies with decent damage. Ken also starts out with Tier 2 magic again, this time also having Kouga (which funnily enough is also not a skill he has in The Journey). He also learns Mediarama WAY earlier than Yukari, at level 35 instead of level 50 (jesus wept). Continuing this weird trend in the Reload version of this story that I didn't notice until reviewing the skill lists for writing this post, a lot of Ken's stuff is learned 5-6 levels later, but he's getting much better stuff than Yukari is much faster. It's nice to see after all these years we can just say Ken is overpowered. Ken once again suffers from Teddie syndrome where you're inevitably going to have to make some cuts to his skillset due to the 8 skill limit, so put some thought into what's most important to you and be ready to make those cuts when the time comes. Hama skills are an easy drop in this version of the game at least.
Junpei: No buffs to Junpei this time, he has all the same skills as The Journey learned in roughly the same order with the same weirdly inflated learn levels that skills have in Episode Aigis. I will forever be disappointed that Spring of Life was dropped from his skillset in this game.
Koromaru: Koromaru is mostly the same as he is in The Journey, but he does have one notable skill omission with two new pick ups to take its place. Since the Full Moon is irrelevant, Getsu-ei has been dropped entirely from Episode Aigis, and Koromaru is a weird beneficiary of this change as in its place he gets Fatal End and Swift Strike for some extra attacking options. The former is whatever, but he latter is actually a pretty nice addition to him, allowing him more flexibility as physical coverage. Koromaru was great in Reload's version of the Journey, and the buffs he received there still allow him to shine brightly within his own darkness in The Answer. Physical is still the dominant form of end game offense in Episode Aigis, so Power Howling is still a great reason all its own to carry along Koromaru, especially in tandem with Metis.
Mitsuru: who cares
Fuuka: Not much to say here, like everyone else her stuff is learned at slightly later levels, but since she's always getting EXP alongside Aigis, she regains her stuff pretty quick. The ability to restore her SP by simply leaving the Abyss of Time means you're under less pressure to keep her SP charged with items, which is nice.
Aigis:
There's a bit more going on with Aigis as protagonist in this version of the game. For one thing, once we do start filling out the compendium, she will gain access to the same Characteristic the MC had, allowing her to tear apart enemies she can exploit the weaknesses of. She also has access to many of the Theurgies the MC had, plus some of her own! The new Theurgies are easily to most interesting aspect of Aigis in this mode, so let's run through those real quick.
For Theurgies that are the same as what the Protagonist had, Aigs retains Cadenza, King and I, Best Friends and Armageddon For Theurgies Aigis CANNOT use, Jack Brothers, Trickster and most notably, Scarlet Havoc are unavailable in Episode Aigis. In their place, we have
Justice: Fittingly requiring the Justice Personae Archangel and Power, Justice is a multi-targeting Pierce attack with a tepid 80 power but an incredible 50% crit rate. With crit rate bonuses, it is actually possible to make this crit 100% of the time, which does definitely have some value. Because the components are fairly weak, you're likely to see this one show up early and have it as a reliable form of early game offense and big damage set up. Just get Apt Pupil and you're off to the races.
Dreamfest: Requiring that you have fused/obtained Devil Incubus and Devil Succubus, Dreamfest is a multi-targeting Dark attack with 200 power and an 80% chance to charm the foes it hits. Pretty significant damage and a useful secondary effect for random fights you might find yourself lacking confidence in. This is Aigis' heavy hitter Theurgy for most of Episode Aigis' mid-late game. Just get some Dark boosting passives, and you can really pop off some wonderful numbers with this skill.
Shadow Hound: Requiring you to fuse Priestess Scathach and Tower Cu Chulainn, Shadow Hound is a 300 Power Pierce skill with 20% crit and an 80% chance to inflict Fear. Unlike Scarlet Havoc which this is the functional replacement for, this is a single targeting skill. Bosses where there's only one target are actually fairly rare in The Answer and Episode Aigis, so despite the slight power edge over Scarlet Havoc, this finds itself being less useful on the whole. When it is good though, it is very good, so always keep a Pierce proficient Persona in the back pocket for when this can be put to good use.
Going into The Answer/Episode Aigis, everyone is set back many levels, (with their upgraded Personae, as obtaining those are mandatory story events in this game) starting them off around level 25 to the mid 30's in this storyline.. This is actually untreaded ground for someone like Ken, who has a lower base level in this mode than he did in the Journey. Now while the characters are generally just scaled back to match what they would be like at the same level in The Journey, there are some rebalanced learn levels for a number of skills, and some new additions entirely. While characters ultimately fold back into the archetypes they occupied at the end of The Journey, the actual path there can see them flexing onto entirely different roles than you'd ever be liable to use them for in the main game. Let's go over some of these changes, starting with the less significant modifications in FES!
In FES
For some universal changes in this version, as mentioned previously everyone has their upgraded Persona, at a much lower level than you're ever likely to see them at in a normal playthrough. This means they enjoy their improved resistances from the jump, although in this version of the game that's always been a negligible boon. You have your full spread of Tactics options unlocked by default in the Answer, so you have full control (or as close to it as you can have the PS2 versions of Persona 3) of your party from the beginning as well. And this isn't something that actually affects gameplay, but everyone has a new victory animation for when the battle ends on their turn, which is a cute detail. Onto individual changes!
Yukari: Actually completely identical to how she would be at the same level in The Journey, and she learns all her skills in the same order at the same level. That said, of your starting cast she is much more complacent in the role of dedicated healer, being the only one who starts with Media and Diarama. Ken needs to get a few levels to even have any healing options in Diarama and Recarm, and Aigis has several things to grapple with when it comes to Persona Fusion in this mode, so Yukari is generally your best source of healing for a good chunk of this storyline.
Akihiko: Same as Yukari, no direct changes here, same skills in the same order. This mode actually sees Akihiko pretty strongly nerfed from the offset though due to circumstance. He only has Tier 1 magic when you're dealing with enemies that you really want to hit with Tier 2 magic, his debuff specialization is much less useful here as The Answer hardly ever tasks you with a single strong foe for a boss, and there's an initial lack of access to accessories to augment his offense further. I'd dare say he's actually pretty bad at the beginning of the mode, and you should probably keep him benched until later when you can quickly grind him up to his good abilities. The EXP curve in The Answer is much different than it is in The Journey, so it's a lot easier and faster to quickly catch up characters in levels.
Ken: The first character who actually gets some very substantial changes. The Answer was the first attempt at buffing Ken to make him more appealing to people over just using Yukari for healing all the time. Almost all of Ken's skills are learned at lower levels, and usually in a different order. Ken's early game offense is also comparable to Metis in strength, due to him having access to a Tier 2 spell and a mid-game physical skill right off the rip. This puts Ken into more of a dedicated, and very flexible, attacking role for a good chunk of the game. He also quickly picks up some good healing options, and while it is still a little bit of a process for him to get multi-target healing, he's a much more competitive party member in other areas until that point. To quickly run down the learn level changes for him,
Diarama: 37->29
Recarm: 42->32(!)
Hamaon: 40->35
Hama Boost: 54->40(!)
Vile Assault: 59->46(!)
Mediarama, Ziodyne and Spear Master retain their default learn levels, 51, 55 and 65 respectively.
Diarahan: 62->60
Samarecarm: 73->71
Mediarahan: 78->76
Yeah they really go all in on attacker Ken for this mode, surprised Ziodyne wasn't also moved up. While he technically learns his best healing earlier, realistically it's still going to be learned at the same time it was for The Journey: in preparation for the final boss. Still, it's cool to see some effort put into making the little guy stand out more, and he's definitely one of the strongest picks starting out in the Abyss of Time.
Junpei: Still one of the best party members in the game, with relatively small but significant changes. For starters, he still has his unique Spring of Life passive, making him a fair deal tankier than anyone else in the early game. Second, Marakukaja was moved up the learn list, going from a level 44 skill to a level 34 one, which he can pick up pretty quickly after he rejoins the party. Marakukaja is a fantastic utility option, so it is much appreciated Junpei just about starts with it. Finally, one really weird change is that Brave Blade is swapped out for Deathbound. I really have no idea what they were going for with this because Junpei STILL learns Vorpal Blade. Incidentally, Vorpal Blade was already kind of a brick in Junpei's learn list, it is doubly so here as the Great condition flat out does not exist in The Answer so it can NEVER benefit from the double damage bonus. Deathbound does have a much better crit rate than Vorpal Blade, so that's kind of cool. Everything else is learned at the same time. Junpei is still the GOAT.
Koromaru: Similar to Ken although not as sweeping, a lot of Koromaru's skills are learned a lot earlier to make him more complacent in his role as an attacker, just with Fire and Darkness instead. For starters, he just has Mudoon instead of Mudo to begin with. Maragion, Fire Boost and Mamudoon were learned at 38, 48 and 71 respectively, are now scooped up at 34, 39 and 49(!!!). Fire Amp is also learned ever so slightly earlier, 75 instead of 77 which matters the same as Ken learning his best healing earlier (not at all). All the things that were good about Koromaru in The Journey are even better here, as he is well ahead of the curve compared to everyone else when it comes to Tier 3 magic, getting Agidyne at a cool level 45 still. Koromaru is still not my preferred character in this version of the game, but his options are relatively stronger here due to Aigis being a lot more constrained in her options than the MC was.
Mitsuru: Taking us back to Yukari and Akihiko, Mitsuru is completely identical to how she is in The Journey. This actually results in her being pretty terrible in this mode. Mitsuru was always something of an early game powerhouse who falls off badly in the mid-game, so it's really hard to appreciate anything she can do when we basically start in the mid-game where her abilities are already pretty lack luster. It's insult to injury that she's the last person to rejoin when you've already gotten other characters who were buffed considerably. You keep her in mind for fights where ice coverage might help and that's about it.
Metis: Will get her own post, but just wanted to have her here to make it clear I didn't forget!
Aigis: Aigis is now our protagonist! This change comes with mechanical downgrades both in and out of universe. In universe, she can no longer go into Orgia Mode, which you probably wouldn't want to do anyway since removing control of the one person you directly take charge of and you lose if they die is a pretty bad idea, but this is recognized as a nerf within the nebulously defined power scaling of the game world. Out of universe, Aigis can only use gun type weapons still, limiting her to the Pierce physical type in normal attacking options, compared to the MC's multi-melee mastery. Aigis also has to grapple with several dropped game mechanics in The Answer that give her a rougher go of things than the MC had, and we will be seeing this in due time, rest assured. While Metis is a robot type unit with her own Orgia Mode, she doesn't really functionally replace the Aigis featured in The Journey, who is just dropped from the roster entirely after the first battle.
Fuuka: Fuuka has unlearned all her fairly underwhelming upgrades, and gets them back at the same time in the same order as she did in The Journey. The one interesting thing you're liable to only ever find out here is that Oracle is learned at Level 50. Fuuka is usually well past that point in The Journey once Juno unlocks unless you're doing a low-level challenge or are extremely lazy about going to Tartarus.
In Reload
The snap back in Episode Aigis hits characters a bit harder here, as Characteristics are dropped and Second Theurgies are reverse-pathos'd out of everyone's skill list. These things come back eventually, but the way they went about it for this mode is, frankly, kind of silly and characters regain these things in an arbitrary order. This results in some characters getting better options much sooner than others, though it's not the biggest deal in the world. As for individual changes,
Yukari: Yukari is remarkably shittier in Episode Aigis, which is especially funny because I don't particularly care for using her in the main game in the first place. All of her skills have had their learn levels greatly inflated, and she legitimately starts with half the options she'd have at the same level in the main game. I'm not going to list the individual level changes, but just take any skill she learns in The Journey and add 10 to the learn level, and that's where almost all her skills are at in Episode Aigis. She also does not get any new skills in this mode. Absolutely dreadful, Jesus.
Akihiko: Same as Yukari, a lot of his stuff is learned weirdly late but it's not as egregious as Yukari's. Akihiko learns his stuff about 5-6 levels later than normal compared to Yukari's 10, and he also doesn't pick up any new options. His Characteristic is also one of the last ones to reach its maximum, making him a fair deal weaker for most of Episode Aigis than he is in The Journey. Like Yukari, I was never super hot on Akihiko to begin with, and this mode makes him even less appealing to me. But hey, you have to use at least one of them starting out, so it comes down to whether you prefer a healer or a stronger attacker.
Ken: Continuing with the theme of making Ken more of an attacker, in Episode Aigis he gets a new skill pick up in Arrow Rain, which later upgrades into Myriad Arrows at level 43. This is a pretty cool extra option for him, especially in the early game where you really want to have cheap and renewable options to tag multiple enemies with decent damage. Ken also starts out with Tier 2 magic again, this time also having Kouga (which funnily enough is also not a skill he has in The Journey). He also learns Mediarama WAY earlier than Yukari, at level 35 instead of level 50 (jesus wept). Continuing this weird trend in the Reload version of this story that I didn't notice until reviewing the skill lists for writing this post, a lot of Ken's stuff is learned 5-6 levels later, but he's getting much better stuff than Yukari is much faster. It's nice to see after all these years we can just say Ken is overpowered. Ken once again suffers from Teddie syndrome where you're inevitably going to have to make some cuts to his skillset due to the 8 skill limit, so put some thought into what's most important to you and be ready to make those cuts when the time comes. Hama skills are an easy drop in this version of the game at least.
Junpei: No buffs to Junpei this time, he has all the same skills as The Journey learned in roughly the same order with the same weirdly inflated learn levels that skills have in Episode Aigis. I will forever be disappointed that Spring of Life was dropped from his skillset in this game.
Koromaru: Koromaru is mostly the same as he is in The Journey, but he does have one notable skill omission with two new pick ups to take its place. Since the Full Moon is irrelevant, Getsu-ei has been dropped entirely from Episode Aigis, and Koromaru is a weird beneficiary of this change as in its place he gets Fatal End and Swift Strike for some extra attacking options. The former is whatever, but he latter is actually a pretty nice addition to him, allowing him more flexibility as physical coverage. Koromaru was great in Reload's version of the Journey, and the buffs he received there still allow him to shine brightly within his own darkness in The Answer. Physical is still the dominant form of end game offense in Episode Aigis, so Power Howling is still a great reason all its own to carry along Koromaru, especially in tandem with Metis.
Mitsuru: who cares
Fuuka: Not much to say here, like everyone else her stuff is learned at slightly later levels, but since she's always getting EXP alongside Aigis, she regains her stuff pretty quick. The ability to restore her SP by simply leaving the Abyss of Time means you're under less pressure to keep her SP charged with items, which is nice.
Aigis:
There's a bit more going on with Aigis as protagonist in this version of the game. For one thing, once we do start filling out the compendium, she will gain access to the same Characteristic the MC had, allowing her to tear apart enemies she can exploit the weaknesses of. She also has access to many of the Theurgies the MC had, plus some of her own! The new Theurgies are easily to most interesting aspect of Aigis in this mode, so let's run through those real quick.
For Theurgies that are the same as what the Protagonist had, Aigs retains Cadenza, King and I, Best Friends and Armageddon For Theurgies Aigis CANNOT use, Jack Brothers, Trickster and most notably, Scarlet Havoc are unavailable in Episode Aigis. In their place, we have
Justice: Fittingly requiring the Justice Personae Archangel and Power, Justice is a multi-targeting Pierce attack with a tepid 80 power but an incredible 50% crit rate. With crit rate bonuses, it is actually possible to make this crit 100% of the time, which does definitely have some value. Because the components are fairly weak, you're likely to see this one show up early and have it as a reliable form of early game offense and big damage set up. Just get Apt Pupil and you're off to the races.
Dreamfest: Requiring that you have fused/obtained Devil Incubus and Devil Succubus, Dreamfest is a multi-targeting Dark attack with 200 power and an 80% chance to charm the foes it hits. Pretty significant damage and a useful secondary effect for random fights you might find yourself lacking confidence in. This is Aigis' heavy hitter Theurgy for most of Episode Aigis' mid-late game. Just get some Dark boosting passives, and you can really pop off some wonderful numbers with this skill.
Shadow Hound: Requiring you to fuse Priestess Scathach and Tower Cu Chulainn, Shadow Hound is a 300 Power Pierce skill with 20% crit and an 80% chance to inflict Fear. Unlike Scarlet Havoc which this is the functional replacement for, this is a single targeting skill. Bosses where there's only one target are actually fairly rare in The Answer and Episode Aigis, so despite the slight power edge over Scarlet Havoc, this finds itself being less useful on the whole. When it is good though, it is very good, so always keep a Pierce proficient Persona in the back pocket for when this can be put to good use.
Part 80 is out! We've reached our first boss encounters, and this is where The Answer really starts to show its teeth. The bosses are far more complex with much less easily exploitable weaknesses compared to most of the bosses in The Journey. Just hitting weaknesses won't cut it, you're going to want to have a plan for everything! Naturally, it is also advisable to live less on the edge than I am in this video.
Extra Notes
-For the Immortal Gigas fight, the Gigas is by far the most, and really only, threatening thing in the battle. Back-to-back Gale Slashes are essentially a game over if that's what he decides to do, so your priority should be to have him locked down at all times. If Metis goes before him, that's great! Even with Dodge Wind, he isn't particularly evasive and as shown you will usually hit him even in the absence of Sukukaja. If you can get Empusa for this battle, she's far better to run than Narcissus, as the latter's Slash weakness can result in disaster if the Maya's target Aigis, or if the Gigas slips a Fatal Edge through. That's only really for if Aigis is the only one going before the Gigas though. Otherwise she'll have her hands tied up on the Maya's as Orpheus is our only option for exploiting their Fire weakness currently. Their Dodge Fire skill procs far more often than the Dodge Wind skill of the Gigas, so always make sure to have your tactics locked in before committing to an Agi spell. Since we need to take it slow, Agi is preferred over Agilao due to a much cheaper cost. It would be disastrous to spend the extra SP on Agilao just to have it miss, especially since we were strapped for SP and I had just enough to clinch out the fight.
-Ken's our best bet for dispatching the Maya's, just line him up to Cruel Attack a Maya that's going after him. That'll do incredible damage, and with luck you can get a Maya off the field within two turns. Metis should just focus on knocking down the Gigas since we don't really have any other way to redirect her into the Maya's once she accomplishes that. Yukari is much preferred here over Akihiko. Not only is she another option for locking down the Gigas, her Diarama is way better at staying ahead of the damage than Akihiko's piddling Dias. But hey, makes things more interesting to win with the worse team set up, right?
-You would definitely do well to prepare more than I did if you're playing along at home. Definitely build up to level 30, and consider exploring your options for fusion. You may very well be able to create something with Fire and Wind skills to ease the burden of switching on Aigis. It's also, of course, a good idea to return to the Desert of Doors and speed run your way to the boss floor so you have more resources to work with.
-The Wrathful Book fight sees more of an obnoxious defense being thrown your way rather than a brutal offense to overcome. Once again, I go in with the worse team for this. Akihiko is much preferred over Yukari here since he doesn't produce an exploitable weakness for the team, and his Lightning Spike theurgy speeds the fight up tremendously considering it's our only multi-target theurgy at present. Tarukaja him with Metis to juice it up and enjoy the dual benefit of it charging faster. Due to the quality of life features present in Reload, it's easier to pop out of Malebolge to heal and do some fusion if you want. Unlike FES, I don't think any extra training would help a huge amount here, this is just a matter of sticking to a good strategy. We don't have any obnoxious Dodge passives to worry about, so that makes things easier for us.
-The first couple zones of the Abyss of Time will only have one boss encounter in them, then tasking us with an unremarkable trek to the bottom where we finally get a story scene. I wouldn't really recommend doing too much in Malebolge since the rewards in treasure and EXP aren't particularly stellar right now. Amusingly, this is one of the longest "victory laps" the game asks us to do after winning a tough fight. Usually you only have to go through 4 or 5 more floors to reach your next plot point of interest.
-With Malebolge completed, we have access to Paulownia Mall and all the services to aid in our battle that lie within. There's bit of an asterisk on that in FES, but we'll go into more detail why next time.
Supplemental: Metis FES/Reload
"C'mon, let's dance!
Level 99 Stats
ST: 88
MA: 51
EN: 70
AG: 57
LU: 46
Similar to Shinji, Metis has no weaknesses OR resistances.
Skills
Fatal End: Starts With
Garula: Starts With
Dekaja: Starts With
Marin Karin: Level 29
Bufula: Level 34
Power Charge: Level 40
Herculean Strike: Level 45
Gigantic Fist: Level 48
Poison Arrow: Level 53
Garudyne: Level 58
Vicious Strike: Level 60
Bufudyne: Level 62
Sexy Dance: Level 65
Akasha Arts: Level 72
Brave Blade: Level 75
The mysterious new Anti-Shadow Weapon that Aigis was supposedly the last of, Metis is a new party member introduced and exclusive to The Answer! While Metis displays a lot of vaguely unhealthy co-dependency on Aigis as her sister in the story, in battle Metis is a far more assertive and self-sustaining force. She's essentially tailor made for every single challenge inside The Answer (which I mean, makes sense since this is only place where you can use her), with an incredibly diverse skill pool and no exploitable weakness allowing her to function or excel in any situation she may find herself in. As a matter of fact, there's basically no situation where you're at a disadvantage for having her along. She has two magic elements to exploit a wide array of weaknesses, she's the only physical attacker in any non-Reload version of P3 to be able to hit all physical types by the end of the game, she possesses some light utility with access to Dekaja (and Charm skills I guess) and again, no weakness means she'll never pass any extra turns to the opposition outside of being hit critically. If practicality is the only metric you care about when selecting a party to use in an RPG, then you should just be using Metis all the time. Even beyond her flexibility, she's just flatly the strongest physical attacker in the game, and by a pretty decent margin at that. While she lacks Boost passives to augment her magic damage, obviously accessories exist to fill in for that and she has another trick up her sleeve to get more out of her Dyne spells than her light MA stat might suggest. Metis also adds to her bag of tricks at a pretty steady and appreciable rate, especially considering The Answer's rapid EXP curve.
Moving onto a more unique trait, Orgia Mode returns, in Neo form! Same as basic Orgia Mode, you'll have the option to use this in Metis' Tactics list during battle. Metis' Neo Orgia mode retains its basic functionality from Aigis' iteration of the skill in The Journey, with one key update: Skills cast in Neo Orgia Mode do not cost HP or SP to use. This is a pretty considerable buff actually, as end game physical skills always have a light bit of danger built in with their HP cost and this bypasses that entirely. Metis can also extend her SP considerably with this and that has a lot of value considering it's much harder to get SP engines online in The Answer than it was in The Journey. Additionally, since Metis actually has attacking magic unlike Aigis, Orgia Mode's omni-boost effect now applies to a much wider range of skills, allowing Metis to deal pretty solid damage with her spells in spite of her gutter tier MA. Doubly so if you mix in the aforementioned accessories. And while Aigis had pretty horrible ST for a purely physical character, Metis has excellent ST resulting in a much bigger value gained from using this even just for her core physical skills. Early on, there's essentially no reason not to throw Metis into Neo Orgia Mode in every random battle, as you'll be scrambling for every decent option you have against the considerably more threatening Shadows present within The Answer. While it still has the Cool Down that makes it undesirable to use in boss fights like in the main game, you can just deliberately let Metis die during the cool down and then revive her to immediately loop back into Orgia Mode. Due to the greater value of bonuses conveyed by Orgia Mode for Metis, this is a more legitimate strategy for her as opposed to a goofy gimmick strategy like it was for Aigis. While Orgia Mode for Aigis was likely forgotten within a month of Aigis joining in the main game (if you even used it at all), Neo Orgia Mode is very much worth keeping in mind if you want Metis to have that extra edge that will let her carry you to victory.
As an aside, the game cites Neo Orgia Mode lasting longer than Orgia Mode as another "improvement" of the skill, and this is technically true when compared purely against the skill as it was in Persona 3 Vanilla but false within the context of Persona 3 FES. As I found out by actually playing Persona 3 Vanilla, Origia Mode originally only lasted 2 turns, making it damn near impossible to get any value out of it and causing Aigis to rapidly become a lodestone for the team (Does make the Persona Q thing I cited in Aigis' write-up more faithful than I realized though). Neo Orgia Mode has the improved 3-turn limit that we saw within The Journey for FES. Between this and another mechanic that's just missing from The Answer entirely, I kind of suspect this part of the FES package was developed first before they fully finalized how the main game was going to be rebalanced. That's just speculation on my part though.
oh yeah and with no weaknesses while using Axes and Hammers as her weapons, Metis proves to be a decent stand in for Shinji. Arguably better due to her wider coverage.
In Reload
"How did I do, Sister!?!
Assault Dive, Fatal End, Bufula, Tarukaja, Dekaja: Starts With
Marin Karin: Level 28
Fast Heal: Level 31
Garula: Level 34
Herculean Strike: Level 38
Charge: Level 42
Deathbound: Level 45
Null Dizzy: Level 49
Gigantic Fist: Level 52
Matarukaja: Level 56
Bufudyne: Level 59
Insta-Heal: Level 63
Garudyne: level 66
Sexy Dance: Level 69(nice)
Akasha Arts: level 72
Enduring Soul: Level 76
Brave Blade: Level 79
Resist Phys: Level 83
Metis is already a damn good party member in The Answer, and Episode Aigis just buffs her even further! The only thing she loses out on in the transition between games is access to Pierce type damage, which is no big deal at all. She picks up an excellent supporting option in Matarukaja, can shrug off ailments now with Insta-Heal, picks up powerful passives in Enduring Soul and Resist Phys, and Charge is now no longer a damage loss to use, making her that much more effective in her bruiser role. You were never at a disadvantage at any point for having Metis along in The Answer, but now I'd say it's actively detrimental not to bring her along. This is in general is true considering a late game story event, but we'll get there when we get there.
Characteristic and Theurgy
Unlocking any character's Characteristic in Episode Aigis is purely a matter of advancing the story and defeating bosses in The Abyss of Time, so no special effort is required on your part to get Metis' Characteristic. This is excellent news, as in contrast with her core abilities, Metis' Characteristic... well it kind of sucks to be honest. Metis has Sister Boost, which grants her a 1.2X damage boost whenever she receives a Shift from Aigis. Not a terrible damage boost, but the deeper you get into the game, the less this is going to be factor in boss encounters (the actual tough fights that would warrant this kind of boost) since you just won't have reliable ways to get a Shift from Aigis to Metis. Even in random battles, while Metis may be flexible, she's not The Answer (heh) to EVERYTHING you come across. Sometimes, it's just best to Shift over to someone who can hit a Weakness, and that's not always going to be Metis. Later on, this will upgrade to Sister Amp, which is a 1.4X multiplier instead. Reminder that well before the ending of The Journey, Aigis had the same boost to all physical attacks she performed that Sister Boost gives at all times. I guess gamifying co-dependency is a little funny at least.
Speaking of gamifying co-dependency, Metis' Theurgy! Her bonus charge condition is the same as Sister Boost/Amp, have Aigis Shift to her and she'll gain about a 1/4 charge on her Theurgy gauge. This is arguably the more useful than the damage boost honestly, as you can very quickly farm up her gauge in random battles and always have Metis' Theurgy in the back pocket. As for the Theurgy themselves, well...
Orgia Mode B and Charging Blitz: I'm not going to go too in depth on these as they are almost the exact same Theurgies Aigis had with the exact same damage multipliers and crit rates. The main difference is that they are Strike instead of Pierce, so it's just a different set of boosting passives you need to be mindful of to maximize the damage for these. Metis' Orgia Mode DOES retain the 0 HP and SP costs for skills that it has in FES (I mistakenly say it doesn't in the first part of Episode Aigis), and with attacking magic at her disposal it still retains its cool omni-boost value. I still don't understand why Orgia Mode has to rob you of direct control, this does nothing but arbitrarily make it worse. While I kind of like it as an option, it's far from broken or anything so I don't know why it needs to be saddled with such a dumb drawback.
In either version of the game, you'd do well to just run Metis full time. She's an excellent addition that can either be the main damage source for the party (especially in Episode Aigis) or just an easy way to plug any holes in the offensive line up. Besides, we've had an entire other story mode to get time with the rest of SEES, it's nice to see a fresh face who's only around for a much shorter sub-story.
"C'mon, let's dance!
Level 99 Stats
ST: 88
MA: 51
EN: 70
AG: 57
LU: 46
Similar to Shinji, Metis has no weaknesses OR resistances.
Skills
Fatal End: Starts With
Garula: Starts With
Dekaja: Starts With
Marin Karin: Level 29
Bufula: Level 34
Power Charge: Level 40
Herculean Strike: Level 45
Gigantic Fist: Level 48
Poison Arrow: Level 53
Garudyne: Level 58
Vicious Strike: Level 60
Bufudyne: Level 62
Sexy Dance: Level 65
Akasha Arts: Level 72
Brave Blade: Level 75
The mysterious new Anti-Shadow Weapon that Aigis was supposedly the last of, Metis is a new party member introduced and exclusive to The Answer! While Metis displays a lot of vaguely unhealthy co-dependency on Aigis as her sister in the story, in battle Metis is a far more assertive and self-sustaining force. She's essentially tailor made for every single challenge inside The Answer (which I mean, makes sense since this is only place where you can use her), with an incredibly diverse skill pool and no exploitable weakness allowing her to function or excel in any situation she may find herself in. As a matter of fact, there's basically no situation where you're at a disadvantage for having her along. She has two magic elements to exploit a wide array of weaknesses, she's the only physical attacker in any non-Reload version of P3 to be able to hit all physical types by the end of the game, she possesses some light utility with access to Dekaja (and Charm skills I guess) and again, no weakness means she'll never pass any extra turns to the opposition outside of being hit critically. If practicality is the only metric you care about when selecting a party to use in an RPG, then you should just be using Metis all the time. Even beyond her flexibility, she's just flatly the strongest physical attacker in the game, and by a pretty decent margin at that. While she lacks Boost passives to augment her magic damage, obviously accessories exist to fill in for that and she has another trick up her sleeve to get more out of her Dyne spells than her light MA stat might suggest. Metis also adds to her bag of tricks at a pretty steady and appreciable rate, especially considering The Answer's rapid EXP curve.
Moving onto a more unique trait, Orgia Mode returns, in Neo form! Same as basic Orgia Mode, you'll have the option to use this in Metis' Tactics list during battle. Metis' Neo Orgia mode retains its basic functionality from Aigis' iteration of the skill in The Journey, with one key update: Skills cast in Neo Orgia Mode do not cost HP or SP to use. This is a pretty considerable buff actually, as end game physical skills always have a light bit of danger built in with their HP cost and this bypasses that entirely. Metis can also extend her SP considerably with this and that has a lot of value considering it's much harder to get SP engines online in The Answer than it was in The Journey. Additionally, since Metis actually has attacking magic unlike Aigis, Orgia Mode's omni-boost effect now applies to a much wider range of skills, allowing Metis to deal pretty solid damage with her spells in spite of her gutter tier MA. Doubly so if you mix in the aforementioned accessories. And while Aigis had pretty horrible ST for a purely physical character, Metis has excellent ST resulting in a much bigger value gained from using this even just for her core physical skills. Early on, there's essentially no reason not to throw Metis into Neo Orgia Mode in every random battle, as you'll be scrambling for every decent option you have against the considerably more threatening Shadows present within The Answer. While it still has the Cool Down that makes it undesirable to use in boss fights like in the main game, you can just deliberately let Metis die during the cool down and then revive her to immediately loop back into Orgia Mode. Due to the greater value of bonuses conveyed by Orgia Mode for Metis, this is a more legitimate strategy for her as opposed to a goofy gimmick strategy like it was for Aigis. While Orgia Mode for Aigis was likely forgotten within a month of Aigis joining in the main game (if you even used it at all), Neo Orgia Mode is very much worth keeping in mind if you want Metis to have that extra edge that will let her carry you to victory.
As an aside, the game cites Neo Orgia Mode lasting longer than Orgia Mode as another "improvement" of the skill, and this is technically true when compared purely against the skill as it was in Persona 3 Vanilla but false within the context of Persona 3 FES. As I found out by actually playing Persona 3 Vanilla, Origia Mode originally only lasted 2 turns, making it damn near impossible to get any value out of it and causing Aigis to rapidly become a lodestone for the team (Does make the Persona Q thing I cited in Aigis' write-up more faithful than I realized though). Neo Orgia Mode has the improved 3-turn limit that we saw within The Journey for FES. Between this and another mechanic that's just missing from The Answer entirely, I kind of suspect this part of the FES package was developed first before they fully finalized how the main game was going to be rebalanced. That's just speculation on my part though.
oh yeah and with no weaknesses while using Axes and Hammers as her weapons, Metis proves to be a decent stand in for Shinji. Arguably better due to her wider coverage.
In Reload
"How did I do, Sister!?!
Assault Dive, Fatal End, Bufula, Tarukaja, Dekaja: Starts With
Marin Karin: Level 28
Fast Heal: Level 31
Garula: Level 34
Herculean Strike: Level 38
Charge: Level 42
Deathbound: Level 45
Null Dizzy: Level 49
Gigantic Fist: Level 52
Matarukaja: Level 56
Bufudyne: Level 59
Insta-Heal: Level 63
Garudyne: level 66
Sexy Dance: Level 69(nice)
Akasha Arts: level 72
Enduring Soul: Level 76
Brave Blade: Level 79
Resist Phys: Level 83
Metis is already a damn good party member in The Answer, and Episode Aigis just buffs her even further! The only thing she loses out on in the transition between games is access to Pierce type damage, which is no big deal at all. She picks up an excellent supporting option in Matarukaja, can shrug off ailments now with Insta-Heal, picks up powerful passives in Enduring Soul and Resist Phys, and Charge is now no longer a damage loss to use, making her that much more effective in her bruiser role. You were never at a disadvantage at any point for having Metis along in The Answer, but now I'd say it's actively detrimental not to bring her along. This is in general is true considering a late game story event, but we'll get there when we get there.
Characteristic and Theurgy
Unlocking any character's Characteristic in Episode Aigis is purely a matter of advancing the story and defeating bosses in The Abyss of Time, so no special effort is required on your part to get Metis' Characteristic. This is excellent news, as in contrast with her core abilities, Metis' Characteristic... well it kind of sucks to be honest. Metis has Sister Boost, which grants her a 1.2X damage boost whenever she receives a Shift from Aigis. Not a terrible damage boost, but the deeper you get into the game, the less this is going to be factor in boss encounters (the actual tough fights that would warrant this kind of boost) since you just won't have reliable ways to get a Shift from Aigis to Metis. Even in random battles, while Metis may be flexible, she's not The Answer (heh) to EVERYTHING you come across. Sometimes, it's just best to Shift over to someone who can hit a Weakness, and that's not always going to be Metis. Later on, this will upgrade to Sister Amp, which is a 1.4X multiplier instead. Reminder that well before the ending of The Journey, Aigis had the same boost to all physical attacks she performed that Sister Boost gives at all times. I guess gamifying co-dependency is a little funny at least.
Speaking of gamifying co-dependency, Metis' Theurgy! Her bonus charge condition is the same as Sister Boost/Amp, have Aigis Shift to her and she'll gain about a 1/4 charge on her Theurgy gauge. This is arguably the more useful than the damage boost honestly, as you can very quickly farm up her gauge in random battles and always have Metis' Theurgy in the back pocket. As for the Theurgy themselves, well...
Orgia Mode B and Charging Blitz: I'm not going to go too in depth on these as they are almost the exact same Theurgies Aigis had with the exact same damage multipliers and crit rates. The main difference is that they are Strike instead of Pierce, so it's just a different set of boosting passives you need to be mindful of to maximize the damage for these. Metis' Orgia Mode DOES retain the 0 HP and SP costs for skills that it has in FES (I mistakenly say it doesn't in the first part of Episode Aigis), and with attacking magic at her disposal it still retains its cool omni-boost value. I still don't understand why Orgia Mode has to rob you of direct control, this does nothing but arbitrarily make it worse. While I kind of like it as an option, it's far from broken or anything so I don't know why it needs to be saddled with such a dumb drawback.
In either version of the game, you'd do well to just run Metis full time. She's an excellent addition that can either be the main damage source for the party (especially in Episode Aigis) or just an easy way to plug any holes in the offensive line up. Besides, we've had an entire other story mode to get time with the rest of SEES, it's nice to see a fresh face who's only around for a much shorter sub-story.
Part 81 is out! With Paulownia Mall conveniently available to us, we have a slew of new options opening up to help us brave The Abyss of Time. We'll be getting more tools to help out in Episode Aigis, but in the context of The Answer uhhhh this kind of it for the rest of the game. Regardless, a new door has opened into the invitingly named Cocytus, so why don't we check that out?
Extra Notes
-Sadly, Weapon Fusion does not return for The Answer, and this is actually REALLY unfortunate. Not only do we not have ultimate weapons to look forward to in this mode, a lot of the abilities on fused weapons would be quite helpful here and that's just a no-go now. The Elemental Resistance weapons in particular are a huge loss as we'd have access to all varieties of them almost from the jump. The complete lack of one of the biggest new mechanics added to FES slightly feeds into my half-serious theory that The Answer was the first thing that was developed for FES.
-Speaking of missing mechanics, for some insane reason there is no Persona Compendium available in The Answer. Once you fuse something off, it's gone and you either have to fuse down to it or hunt it down in the Desert of Doors again if you want it back. Knowledge of the best things to work towards and keep is crucial for doing well in The Answer. Thankfully, this is not a limitation we have in Episode Aigis, so building dedicated Personae to use is much less of an ordeal than it is in The Answer.
-We also have Elizabeth Requests returning in Episode Aigis, and these are a fairly easy way to pick up extra resources to work with in the mode. Unlike The Journey, there's no permanently missable requests and all of them are either milestone rewards or fetch quests, many of which you don't even really have to actively track what Elizabeth is looking for. Always take the chance to talk to Elizabeth when you see that exclamation point.
-Junpei and Koromaru are usable once again, and they're both pretty damn good for this stage of the game. Especially in The Answer, Junpei boasts a wide move pool, high durability, and almost immediately scoops access to Marakukaja. Koromaru has Mudoon and decently powerful fire magic at his disposal as well. Koromaru has wider physical coverage in Episode Aigis but will be taking a minute to get his Fire skills back. He still boasts some pretty good damage for now due to Dark magic just having a higher base power than the core elements.
-Looping back a bit, Be Blue V in The Answer has its full inventory available right away, which is immensely helpful. We'll definitely want to scoop up 2 sets of every elemental boosting bracer, as well as a Speed Enhancer to ensure Aigis can land her skills consistently in battle. With the Antique Store functioning normally in Episode Aigis, we're instead going to have to put in a bit more work to get these kind of accessories there. Agni Bracers in particular can helpful for the upcoming boss fight, so try to tuck away some cash to make that purchase.
-Aigis' new Justice Theurgy isn't the most powerful one in the game, but its incredible crit rate makes it an easy way to scoop up an extra turn for Aigis and secure knockdowns. With Apt Pupil, it is almost guaranteed to crit, so we'll want to keep our eyes peeled for the first thing we can pick that up from, in addition to looking for Pierce Boost and Multi-Target Boost to augment it further. For Apt Pupil, we can pull Archangel from the Compendium (Episode Aigis gives you a number of pre-registered Personae if you want to scour the lower rungs for skills) and raise him up to Level 13. Pierce Boost is on Eligor and Level 33, and Multi-Target Boost is on Queen Mebd at Level 29, so these are all things we'll want to grab and ideally set up with Growth skills before long.
-Speaking of Theurgies, Koromaru is now the same as everyone else and starts with just the one. The loss of Power Howling at the offset is actually pretty unfortunate, as we are very light on any extra sauce for the damage we can deal, and that comes up in a big way by the end of the video.
-For notable things to look for in The Answer, we'll want to start securing some Boost Passives so we can create dedicated Elemental users. Orthrus, Sarasvati, Take-Mikazuchi and Kusi Mitama are the closest things to us in level to pick up for those, and we can quickly grind them to the necessary levels that they get those skills once we make it to the next area in The Abyss.
-The EXP scaling in The Answer makes dedicated training go by a lot faster, which is why I'm just advocating for pure grinding on some things. There are really wimpy encounters that are still giving us 800-1000 EXP with Wand Cards, and that gets multiplied even further for your under leveled Personae. By contrast, the EXP gained in Episode Aigis is much less generous on an encounter-to-encounter basis, so this is why we want to build towards spreading around more Growth skills. Bosses are EXP Pinatas in general for Persona 3 Reload, and that's where we're going to grab most of our level ups throughout this story mode.
-Moving onto more ways that Episode Aigis added a bit more meat to the bones of The Answer, Monad somewhat inexplicably makes a comeback here, with slightly revised mechanics. We get a choice of 3 doors, each one being varying levels of difficulty. The hardest doors will task us with fighting every single possible Monad boss that is present in the current area we're in. The harder the door you pick, the more rewards you get for triumphing. Naturally, we'll be taking the hardest doors every time. And this is where the lack of firepower really hurts us early on. Everything is both durable and relatively dangerous, so we're in for long battles that demand careful attention. Winning is well worth the time though, as we get gems, items and, most importantly, Equipment! Abyssal equipment will be denoted with a random negative emotion such as Sorrow, and bringing us back to the older versions of Persona 3 they will have randomized abilities. Accessories in the Abyssal line will convey large stat bonuses, while armor and weapons can have abilities that run the gamut from EXP boosts, damage boosts, Endure skills, crit boosters, and even more stat bonuses on top. This is why we will basically never use Kurosawa as anything other than a pawn shop, we can just grab all the gear we need from either Monad or the Antique Shop. Hopefully we can clear these faster in the near future, I was not expecting to end this video with an endurance match.
Part 82 is out! After getting bogged down with Monad last time, we have a relatively quick go of the major boss encounters for Cocytus and work our way towards another door to the past. This time though, there's no mechanical benefits for doing so. Actually, all truth be told, this is probably the least interesting door that go through since it really doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. There are some more interesting scenes to be had later, trust!
Extra Notes
-I mention this towards the end of the video, but something cool to keep in mind in The Answer and Episode Aigis is that we can actually create a team that is capable of covering every damage type independent of Aigis. With the combo of Ken, Koromaru, and Metis, every single attacking type will be available to you even with no need to have Aigis cover blind spots in your offensive line up. This is mostly only useful for training, but it's still appreciable for general exploration in Reload where you have floor jump to mitigate to eliminate the need for backtracking that FES has.
-We're just about set up with our core elemental coverage for Aigis in FES, with Orthrus, Sarasvati and Take Miikazuchi being our easiest access to Boost passives. We'll want to gradually fuse these up into better Personae as they will eventually fall off, and thankfully there's a pretty cool guide on GameFAQs that outlines fusion paths you can utilize to get dedicated specialists to cover all your damage dealing needs throughout the game. Note in the video I say I'll fuse up Orobas, but he actually does need to get a few levels before snagging Wind Boost. I ended up getting up to the level to fuse Clotho anyway over the course of this video, so I'll just fuse her to pick up Wind Boost since it's relatively early in her learn list.
-On the Reload side, I'm working my way towards setting up a Justice abuser and I have a good chunk of the pieces ready for it. Pierce Boost is the big thing we're missing right now, and I'll likely just card Growth 2 onto Eligor rather than fuse a new one for the sake of convenience. As far as other boosts go, we can get Wind Boost through a Level 40 Orobas, a threshold we're getting close to. We have Fire Boost from Baphomet already, Mothman is a good option for picking up Elec Boost and we'll get Dark Boost by way of Black Frost once I create him. Ice Boost is a bit harder to come by, but probably the easiest way we can grab it is Carding Growth onto a Jack Frost (or just attempting to grind him out like I did Archangel). We'll be setting up a Black Frost as an Ice Specialist (which has the bonus of securing Dark Boost for us as well), since King and I is still around and we'll want to make him for that regardless. Not sure if I'll bother with Light Boost, but Virtue learns it at Level 35, so that's an option for it.
-If you're able to get Yatagarasu with a single target Ice spell, it is fantastic for the Brilliant Cyclops fight, leaving us with no weaknesses to any of the incoming damage as well as Accuracy boosting skills to eliminate the chance of missing. The only major gaffe I made in this battle otherwise was not setting everyone's tactics properly once the Cyclops fell, but this was a pretty clean battle otherwise.
-We're slowly gaining in power in Reload, so hopefully boss fights won't run quite as long in the near future. Not much to say about the boss here, it's just a matter of managing their knockdowns properly and capitalizing on any Dizzy statuses that get through.
-Beating bosses and advancing the story are the primary ways our party members will regain their Persona upgrades in Episode Aigis. This does result in some characters gaining a greater degree of usability earlier than others. Akihiko and Junpei have great upgrades, so naturally securing those for them early on adds a ton to their value in the context of the whole game. We also periodically get some field ability upgrades for Aigis, which go a long way to make her feel less janky for exploration. Honestly, Aigis feels weirdly bad to control compared to the MC right now, and only in Episode Aigis. She feels just fine in The Answer.
-This is the last time we'll only have one boss fight for an area in The Abyss of Time. Apologies to all those who enjoyed the victory jaunts.
-Since there's close to zero reason to use healing clocks in Episode Aigis, I'd actually advise just opening every locked chest you come across this time around. Not so much for the items they have, though that can occasionally be nice, but moreso for the chance of a Great Clock spawning. Episode Aigis and The Answer reward switching up your party a bit more than The Journey did, so it's a good idea to keep everyone reasonably leveled.
Part 83 is out! In order to make the time in between dungeon crawling feel a bit more meaningful, Episode Aigis has added random garbage we find in The Abyss of Time that allows our friends to go through character development once again. Since we're at the mercy of progression when it comes to gaining these items, this means certain party members jump up in usefulness sooner than others, though it's not a huge deal in the long run. Over on the FES side, with Mitsuru added we now have the full range of tools the game allows us, so the dungeon-crawl life is locked in there. Let's see what Caina has for us!
Extra Notes
-As state previously, Akihiko and Junpei are the first to regain their characteristics, though Akihiko definitely gets more mileage out of his right now than Junpei. Junpei's starting skill load out is kind of junk in Episode Aigis, so we won't be seeing his signature crit spam until a little while later.
-The Vermillion Clock is available now, which allows us to just dupe our skill cards whenever we want in exchange for Twilight fragments. This is the main thing we'll be using our fragments for, in particular for making sure we can dupe and have effectively infinite Boost/Amp cards. Right now, the biggest use of it is easily passing around Growth 2 so we can develop multiple Personae at once and secure all the elemental boosts.
-We're slowly gaining in power, but Monad will still take us awhile to get through. Rest assured that we get our first really big power spike at the end of this video, and ideally these gauntlets won't take 15 minutes every time we get to them going forward.
-Over on the FES side, my plan to gain Clotho for Wind Boost rapidly changed course again as I just got Kusi Mitama from a Shuffle Time. Kusi Mitama has some fringe perks for raising up, as he awards us Auto-Rakukaja and Recarm alongside Wind Boost. We'll probably eventually upgrade him into a Clotho regardless, but I can put off getting Clotho for later now. Other Personae we're keeping any eye out for down the line are Thoth and Okuninushi. King Frost is going to be sticking around relatively longer, as the next best thing we can fold him into is Parvati, who is level 47.
-With Black Frost acquired in Episode Aigis, we have an excellent power hitting option in King & I as well as an excellent Ice+Dark caster. Black Frost also scoops up Agidyne, but I'll likely be dropping that and just creating a dedicated Fire caster.
Part 84 is out! We've got another set of bosses to clear out, and thankfully we've increased our power and options considerably at this point, so these ones prove to be fairly breezy and non-stressful. Things are still a bit of a slog in Episode Aigis unfortunately, but we are on the cusp of fixing this.
Extra Notes
-Koromaru was a bit of a mis-pick for the Death Castle fight as I was mislead by the github bestiary on which floors the bosses were located on, but luckily there's a dedicated Answer guide (with requisite dubious strategies for the era) that I can cross reference to avoid this mistake in the future. He wasn't the worst thing to bring along though, he's fairly unthreatened by the El Dorado Beasts and it'll help in the next boss to have all the extra levels we've gotten for him. Were I to do it again, I'd have probably brought Ken for this for Cruel Attack opportunities and Diarama support. The Dancers in Episode Aigis were cake by comparison, probably the quickest boss fight we've had thus far, including Monad battles!
-Things compare and contrast pretty interestingly between FES and Reload for this story when it comes to gameplay. Random battles have been complete non-issues in FES, often ending before the enemy gets to do anything but bosses have been pretty lengthy and require good focus and planning in order to avoid losing control of them. By contrast, random encounters have been slogs in Reload with bosses being relatively shorter, at least on an individual basis. The relation between Aigis and the rest of the party is also different. Aigis isn't that far ahead of her allies in the damage race in FES, sometimes even being outpaced and she often needs to cover a more supporting role since it's easier for her to gain access to those options than good power hitting options. It's the other way around in Reload, we have pretty good supporting options by way of our allies, but some of them are doing MISERABLE as damage dealers, and Aigis is way beyond anyone else right now. I was able to use generally similar strategies across all versions of The Journey, with some minor tweaking for version specific mechanics, but I find myself approaching things in wildly different ways in the different versions of The Answer. Not sure if that makes for interesting viewing, but it has kept me surprisingly engaged in this leg of the LP.
-We're starting to reach levels where we can "tier up" our elementalists in FES, the specific ones we want to keep in mind are fusing Sati up to Okuninushi, King Frost up to Parvati, and we've already got Take-Mikazuchi into Thoth who will later be turned into Dionysus. For a Wind caster, we're actually pretty fine to just take Kusi Mitama and just use Triangle spreads to fuse him up the Fortune line, since from him onward the Fortune line is pure Wind casters with the Sisters of Fate. I'm not going to sweat dedicated Light or Dark casters since Daisojou and Alice come almost out of the box as excellent for that, so we can just grab them once we reache their level and have that situation sorted. We'll also want to pick up Nandi at some point for Marakukaja access and eventual Cool Breeze access. It's harder to fuse that around without the Compendium, but it is very worthwhile to at least HAVE something that has access to it.
-There's no specific upgrades I'm gunning for in Reload currently, though it would be a good idea to register Black Frost as he is now, and then fuse him off into something with Fire Boost so we can have a powerful Agidyne user at our disposal, We don't have ready access to that level of literal Fire power yet, so it's a good thing to have even if the direct result isn't an amazing Persona. I'll be dropping Agidyne from Black Frost to make room for Dark Boost, so I do have to do this sooner rather than later.
-That leads into our next problem, Money is a bit tighter in Reload since we have Compendium expenses to consider and payouts haven't been buffed to assist us with purchases like they have in FES. One thing we can abuse is the Lovers Major Arcana, which has been retooled to replicate the Rarity fortune from The Journey. Once we explore a section of our current Abyss zone, we can just spam stair fast travel with Lovers in effect to cheese out Rare form encounters and obtain a good supply of Coins to sell. It's things like these that's worth keeping in mind if you find yourself wanting to leave The Abyss. We could do that to use some of the upgrade items we got from the last boss room, but that would rob us of current Major Arcana bonuses until we can re-obtain them.
-Speaking of team upgrades, while we'll mostly be using our Twilight fragments on the Vermillion Clock, be sure to keep at least a few on hand for snagging those upgrades. Lacking the fragments to get high value upgrades like the ones for Yukari or Akihiko is definitely not good for your ability to perform in combat.
-Monad continues to be a slog but you really do want to go through it every time you see it. We got an extremely high value weapon that provides Auto-Masukukaja, well before we can naturally obtain that ability. It's stuff like this that goes a long way to getting us on par with the enemies we're facing. Note that it's not just Aigis equipment that can get abilities like that either, any party member's weapons or armors can have incredible abilities like that. Some of these equipment pieces will have abilities so good, I'll likely continue to use them even after I get things that are numerically much stronger.
Part 85 is out! Wrapping up Caina this go around, with us getting a more interesting gaze into the past. With the conception of SEES being in our rearview, we also unlock yet more forgotten aspects of power for our team. Things are looking up!
Extra Notes
-Things continue to be a bit of a slog in Episode Aigis unfortunately, we're really lacking in some serious juice for the rest of our team when it comes to damage. Things are slowly improving on that front, but if you're struggling then it's far from a bad idea to grind out some money and cycle through some fusions and pull back from the compendium to secure better Personae. We're also pretty lacking in damage mitigation, picking up a Yamata-no-Orochi and leveling him to 28 for Marakukaja is not a bad idea.
-Generally speaking, any time you finish up a zone in FES, it's a good idea to dive into the early floors of the next zone and grind up some of your current Personae in stock to secure new abilities and fuse out some new help. You can use the opportunity to catch up any underleveled members of SEES while you're at it. Remember, cycling out your line up can actually be pretty helpful compared to The Journey!
-Upon clearing Caina in Reload, we regain some lost Theurgies. Akihiko's Electric Onslaught can definitely dish out some wonderful numbers by taking advantage of the bonus damage from Elec Boost and Buff Boost, and we've been really lacking in nuke potential so that's much appreciated. Koromaru, meanwhile, regains Power Howling and that is an incredible boon. We've really been hurting for ways to amplify the entire party's outgoing damage, and this is a wonderful option for achieving that! Coincidentally, Koromaru is doing quite well in FES. The combo of Fire Boost+Agni Bracers is already online and he'll soon have Agidyne. That's a pretty excellent early damage boon for the Doggo, so always keep him in mind when you're dealing with enemies weak or neutral to fire!
Enough story progression has happened that I figured I could push out the next compilation of cutscenes for FES! With no gifts for our friends, plot is mostly dictated by the scattered voiced scenes and the handful of comments our team makes when a new area opens. Like I said, the hefty opening to The Answer is non-indicative of the structure of the rest of the storyline. Not too much to say here, I do find the presence of robots in Paulownia Mall being glossed over to be amusing, though you can rationalize that as the general nature of the Abyss of Time and the potential non-existence of these actions allowing the general public to pass over that interesting sight. As said before, Ken's flashback doesn't really cover anything we didn't already know, though I guess we do get a slightly better insight into Ken's situation in his mom's post-mortem as well as the Kirijo Group's involvement in the incident. Mitsuru and Akihiko's flashback is a lot more fun and interesting, it's always cool to see the more juvenile incarnations of the characters we largely know as "the responsible ones".
Part 86 is out! With Caina on the outs, it's time for Antenora. Business is proceeding as usual in FES, but things in Reload are starting to take a brighter turn for us. Enemies aren't really increasing in HP yet while we're getting substantially better options at our disposal. Things are still kind of a slog, but we're almost at the point where we should be able to handle every encounter we come across relatively quickly. At the very least, we're not at much threat of death all the time now.
Extra Notes
-Things are looking pretty good in FES right now! With Okuninushi, Parvati, Thoth and Clotho at our disposal, we've got solid damage dealers in every main magic type. Thoth and Clotho will soon be upgraded to even better options, which is a little funny because I've only been able to use them a bit. We've also scooped up good supporting options, with Black Frost for Marakunda (And Trafuri if I feel like picking it up), Rangda soon to give us Matarunda, and Nata Taishi coming in with Masukukaja. I've also got Saki Mitama chilling in the back with Growth 2 (Courtesy of Yatagarasu) so that we can eventually gain access to Mediarama and be less reliant on Bead Chains for AOE heals.
-Cool Breeze is also online, currently on Parvati since I fused her off the back of a Nandi. We'll probably want to scoop up another Nandi when I have the chance because more avenues for Cool Breeze in The Answer is always a good thing without the ability to just compendium something with it out.
-We'll be looking to convert Thoth into Dionysus soon since we're now level 48 and he's are next access to Electric goodness. For Clotho, it's fairly straightforward to just use Triangle Spreads to gradually push her up the Fortune line. I will say, lacking Triangle Spreads wasn't really something I felt in the main game for Reload, but I definitely feel it in The Answer, it is much trickier to fuse forward with your elemental specialists without it.
-A big thing we want to pick up now that we're the proper level for it in Episode Aigis is Quetzacoatl, our earliest access to Growth 3 and a fantastic way to spread that passive around without needing Skill Cards. I'll definitely aim to pick him up next time.
-Money has been annoyingly tight, but now that we have more exploration options it's actually not a terrible idea to jaunt through Cocytus and Caina and farm out Rare forms for their Coins. I may have to do that myself soon as we've been using the compendium a lot to keep ourselves powerful.
-We get a new Theurgy, and it's a damn good one: Dreamfest! This is a multi-target Dark skill with even better damage than King & I with a massive chance to Charm the opponent, making excellent crowd control in random encounters in addition to being an amazing beatstick everywhere else. This will likely be your go-to for big damage for most of the game, the Theurgy it competes with for that is a bit more limited in application (though it is stronger in terms of raw damage.)
-Tying into the point about money, it's relatively simple (if tedious) to run through outdated areas and try to force a clock spawn. We want to bring ideal party members to every situation, so it's a pretty good idea to do this in order to keep people relevant, and unlike The Journey there's basically no opportunity cost to this since Episode Aigis has effectively infinite resources when it comes to time. I would vastly prefer it if the game just had leaked experience though, spending 15 minutes looking for a Clock spawn is not my idea of a good time, even if it is a relatively small portion of a playthrough.
Part 87 is out! We begin making proper headway in Antenora, excising about 35 minutes of tedious Monad fights from the recording in order to have a slightly more engaging and less repetitive experience. With Power Howling on our side, we're on the cusp of consistently laying out bigger numbers, but we're definitely in need of just a couple more upgrades before the team can really pop. The Answer has been an interesting experience thus far, I was so used to the FES recording being the longest just due to the overall slower game pacing, but it's actually been a fairly relaxed and breezy jaunt. While we're struggling in Episode Aigis at least, we do have added interactions with our party to pad out the experience. It's a much appreciated addition, even if a good chunk of it has the unfortunate tendency to make Metis seem even more obsessive.
Part 88 is out! After lamenting the low output we've been knocking in Reload, this time we'll actually find ourselves doling out pretty reasonable punishment! Thank goodness, I've been starting to resent the sloggy nature of battles in Episode Aigis thus far. We're also breaking into Amp passives, so we're really cooking with gas now! With the opposition folding before us, we cruise into another vision of the past.
Extra Notes
-Quetzalcoatl in Episode Aigis secures us Ice Amp after enough levels, and this will really let us pop off big numbers with King and I. We also lucked into a Multi-Target Boost Card, so I can take Quetzalcoatl and Black Frost and use them to create a mighty ice caster. Things are looking up on the cold front!
-Junpei and Mitsuru regain their Second Theurgies, and they're a good deal more useful here! We're not getting Mitsuru's when we already have Amp passives juicing up everyone else's damage far past it and we're still far off from Debilitate. There's quite a bit we can accomplish with a good pre-emptive strike with it! Junpei's high damaging Blaze of Life is also much appreciated when we're really lacking in high crit rate moves for him, it's an easy thing to build towards and a comfortable way for Junpei to notch a power hit, though it lacking synergy with Power Howling unlike Hack 'n Blast is unfortunate.
Part 89 is out! Things are business as usual in FES, while Reload sees a somewhat amusing dichotomy pop up. While the upcoming bosses and Monad encounters haven't really bulked up for the last two areas we've been through, enemies continue to climb up in HP totals, often having around 500-700 HP. We're not too keen on swapping out Aigis' weapon until she is able to replicate Auto-Masukukaja with a Persona, so All-Out Attacks will continue to struggle to finish out encounters and get us those wonderful Shuffle Times. Still, we're looking pretty solid at this stage!
Extra Notes
-We're reaching a new power spike for Aigis in The Answer right now, as we're reaching the point where Tier 4 Magics are available to us. We're already en route for Ragnarok with Surt, though sadly between a lack of way to boost his stats and a pointed nerf in the removal of Fire Amp from his skill list, we're going to eventually have to fuse him into either Hell Biker or Seth to continue increasing our power with fire spells. We've kind of passed the point where Dionysus is useful to us, so I may just shop around fusions to turn Thoth into Thor at this point, who we can then transition into Odin. Thor is also our earliest access to Auto-Mataru, so there's some value there as well.
-Kumbhanda is on the horizon as an easy way to get Auto-Masuku, being a level 56 Persona that starts with it. For Auto-Maraku, we could raise up Barong to 56 to learn it, or just wait until Level 60 and fuse Arahabaki who starts with it. Auto-Mataru was previously mentioned for Thor, but since we need to convert him into Odin, we'll instead probably want it from Melchizedek who learns it at level 60. Once we can get some combo fusion of these three Personae, we'll reclaim a huge opening advantage in boss battles that should likely result in most of them becoming light work.
-For Episode Aigis, Siegfried will eventually scoop up Auto Masuku, and we can get Auto Maraku off of a level 51 Hecatoncheires. Sadly, like the Reload version of the Journey, Auto Mataru is sectioned off to a level 74 Atavaka, so it'll be a bit before we will be able to fully juice up our team from turn 1.
-Now would be a good time to look into picking up some Amp skills. We already have Ice Amp from Quetzalcoatl, so other Personae we want to keep an eye out for are the previously mentioned Siegfried (Slash Amp at 59), Mada (Strike Amp at 62), Bishamonten (Pierce Amp at 64), Suzaku (Fire Amp at 60), Atropos (Wind Amp at 60), and Thor (Elec Amp at 66). Light Amp and Dark Amp are still a ways off sadly.
-As far as the rest of our team goes, we're not super desperate for any boosts for them at this stage. If you're using Ken for exploration though, keeping Light boosting equipment in mind is a good idea, we'll probably want to fuse Gae Bolg up for him at some point.
Part 90 is out! Had an unfortunate setback in Reload where I forgot to save after ending the recording, so I had to re-do a bunch and sadly lost some of the goodies I got last time. Is what it is, after getting back to where we were previously and taking the time to farm out some Rare Shadows and Twilight Fragments, we're looking pretty good now! Things are going as smoothly as ever in FES, I've actually been enjoying this replay of The Answer a surprising amount. I figured it was going to be tedious to go back through, but it's been kind of fun playing in a framework I've developed from experience.
Extra Notes
-The Abyss of Time is winding down so the game is just randomly throwing upgrades at us now! Fuuka regains Revelation, and as always the chance for dual Charge-Concentrate is always nice, and if we can get are team fully auto-buffed, it's pretty reliable to get. Metis also picks up a more conventional beat-stick in Charging Blitz, allowing her to much more easily slam enemies who are downed or otherwise vulnerable to revved up hits.
-Akihiko reclaims Buff Amp, and its about this point where he's back to being one of the strongest. A secondary benefit of me grabbing the Indra Bracers is that we can use those to turbo charge Electric Onslaught while we're waiting for Akihiko to get Elec Amp naturally. Gotta love multiplier stacking!
Part 91 one is out! I'll admit I've been stalling a bit on recording for this as I still need to get a file ready for Episode Aigis' bonus boss, but hopefully I can find some time in the near future to get that ready. Disregarding that, we wrap up Ptolomea and get a little insight into Mitsuru's past. I appreciate Mitsuru taking the opportunity to make Junpei squirm even we she knew damn well what he meant.
Extra Notes
-Ken and Yukari finally regain their powerful second theurgies! These ones have a lot of swing potential so it makes sense why we're getting them last, though its definitely hurt Yukari's value as a team member up to this point that she gets Tranquility so late. Hopefully I can work these two into more boss encounters in the future!
Part 92 is out! Unlike our last area close out, we do actually have some upgrades for our team to run through in Episode Aigis, bringing Yukari and Junpei to their full potential. Since Junpei has Deathbound now too, Crit Spam is pretty viable for him with the proper loadout.
I took the liberty of doing a bit of offscreen training in FES, so we're pretty well set for the future. Honestly, we've probably only got a couple major fusions left before I'm locked in for the remainder of the game. We'll eventually want to turn Surt into something like Hell Biker or Seth once he gets Ragnarok, but we're otherwise pretty well off for damage. A full team auto-buffer is also a wonderful thing to have. I'll be honest, I was worried this stage of the LP would be tedious, but because I've been pacing it out a bit I've actually found it to be pretty fun. It's been awhile since I really had to care about my full team set up in this game, and I will admit the restrictions of fusion in The Answer make me a bit more appreciative of what each individual party member brings to the table.
Part 93 is out! The dawning realization that I'm almost done with this game has been very weird to grapple with, but we soldier on with maximum efficiency regardless! A little too efficient actually, I'm missing some shadow item drops that Elizabeth wants in Reload, so I'll have to grab that at some point. I'll also be taking same time this week to finally get my personal file ready to take on the bonus boss for Episode Aigis, and once I finally have that done this LP will be charging headlong towards its conclusion. Two years of effort is about to come to a close!
Part 94 is out! Judecca is done and dusted, and we get a little insight into Yukari's past with a flashback not all too dissimilar to Ken's where it's just a slight bit of clarity on something we already knew. With this, we have just one more set of doors to go in the Abyss of Time. Empyrean has it's fair share of tricks to throw at us though, so let's not get complacent right at the end!
Part 95 is out! With a couple more upgrades for our part in tow, we're ready to breach the final block of the Abyss of Time: Empyrean! Our toughest foes await us here, but with adequate preparations we should be able to defeat them with minimal issue. I likely will take some time to develop more specialists in Reload as we're a little light on coverage for Aigis currently. The situation in FES is mostly fine, though I'll probably want to spend some time getting a Norn ready so we have a defensively solid healer in the back pocket. Bishamonten will likely be upgraded into Saturnus once we can create him.
Part 96 is out! We actually have some major story developments coming up soon with a barrage of cutscenes the likes of which we haven't quite seen since the beginning of The Answer. Considering that, I decided to just take out all the Empyrean bosses now so we don't have to worry about lengthy battles before lengthy scenes next time. Luckily in the case of Episode Aigis, we can finally just demolish bosses with Theurgy blitzes from the jump. Somewhat of a cold comfort since these are the final Abyssal Guardians we'll be facing in the main game, but oh well.
Extra Notes
-We get access to Shadow Hound, a Pierce based theurgy that theoretically is an upgrade to Justice but is kind of underwhelming. Unlike Scarlet Havoc from the main game, it's a single target skill and its crit rate, while high, isn't quite as overwhelming as Scarlet Havoc. If you get the Magic Boost Cannon of Eminence, it's just flatly worse than Aigis' other Theurgy options in most cases due to the greater damage passive stacking you can do for them. And the reason I thought it was a Strike skill was because Shadow Hound was one in FES. Woopsie!
-This isn't necessarily your last chance to do any training, but something is going to come up soon that will make training both trickier and less beneficial for the entirety of SEES. If you have any grinding you want to do, take care of it now or you'll be in a bad spot later! For Reload's part, we're pretty much fine as we are, but I did take some time on my own to pick up Norn and use her as an excuse for some incidental training. Norn is also defensively good to have because she picks up Absorb Elec to patch out her only weakness, plus giving some chip healing with Regenerate 3. With that secured, we should be good for the coming challenges.
Part 97 is out! At the bottom of Empyrean, we get a fairly obvious reveal and confrontation, and then suddenly the plot kicks back into high gear after being a fairly light affair up to this point. I do get what they were going for with the party schism here, but it probably could have done with just a tad more set up. Funnily enough, although it's not great there either, the FES version of The Answer does sell this a little better with no team hang outs and the party managing a bit more venom and resentment in delivering their reasons for fighting.
Now that we're this deep and this LP is likely going to be finished within a matter of a couple weeks, I figured I'd admit something I find kind of surprising: playing this story mode again, and especially the two versions side-by-side, I think I actually like the FES version a lot more both in gameplay and in story execution. The Answer is annoying in a lot of ways considering how it's a pure dungeon crawler that guts a lot of the mechanics that made progression fun in The Journey, but I do find the game to be decently designed within those constraints and there is something fun in kludging together a working load out using your accumulated knowledge so far while working in a much more restrictive fusion system. Episode Aigis has a lot of quality of life improvements, but like Reload in general, that lack of friction makes the experience a little dull by comparison. It does not help that the mechanically in-media-res nature of the mode and the fast progression exacerbates some of Reload's design problems: enemies are ridiculously tanky early on with little in the way of good options to deal with them unless you want to spend a lot of time money farming and Persona fusing/grinding early on, while in the late game Theurgy spam trivializes any potentially difficult challenges. While it's nice that more was added to spice up time not spent in dungeons, like I said it kind of undercuts the stressful situation SEES finds themselves in and mitigates the feeling of cabin fever that at least partially explains the breaking of the team in the 11th hour. I'll probably have the next FES cutscene compilation ready to upload tomorrow night, and I think this section of the game makes for an interesting contrast in how the plot comes across. Also, the Shadow Protag has a way better death scene in the original version that's actually kind of horrifying in a way this game doesn't typically go for.
Speakin' o the way events are presented in FES, here are how the recent story events are presented in FES!
Like I said, while there definitely could have been more build up, I think the culmination of events that does occur lands slightly better in FES, if only because both Yukari and Akihiko have much more pointed and abrasive exchanges of words that make it clear they've been grappling with a lot internally. Also I completely forgot how graphic it was when the Shadow Protag dies in this version and it caught me slightly off-guard during the recording lol.
Like I said, while there definitely could have been more build up, I think the culmination of events that does occur lands slightly better in FES, if only because both Yukari and Akihiko have much more pointed and abrasive exchanges of words that make it clear they've been grappling with a lot internally. Also I completely forgot how graphic it was when the Shadow Protag dies in this version and it caught me slightly off-guard during the recording lol.
Part 98 is out! We have, and subsequently resolve, a schism in our party that can only really be resolved via martial contest. Hey, video game you know? Anyways there's actually not that much to say about these fights since there's pretty straightforward strategies for them in both games. For FES, we can just abuse Thunder Reign and Orgia Mode against everyone except Akihiko, who isn't too much of a threat anyway. For Reload, we instead can just turtle up until our Theurgies are ready, and then throw out Justice into a Sister Amp shift, which even with just Akasha Arts has a good chance of demolishing our friends with no further retaliation. Regardless, with this little spat resolved and everyone on good enough terms, we're ready to roll into the ending next time. We're finally here!
The penultimate edition of Let's Play Persona 3 is out! Though the second-to-last part of the main videos, this marks the narrative conclusion of Persona 3 with only a non-canonical boss gauntlet to go through as a capstone to the LP. For the tasks at hand, I'm far from the first person to say this but regardless of how you feel about the rest of the storyline, the final boss and the lead up to it is pretty dumb here. As I said in the video, Nyx was amalgamation of the negative traits of humanity coming to bring deliverance and could not be thwarted simply by punching her in the face, the final battle being more of a formality. Although I don't think this was the intent, Erebus is absolutely a convenient amalgamation of humanity's negative traits that can totally be punched in the face to make it go away. I get the party is intended to keep striving for a better world after the fact, but it's easy to be critical of post-hoc additions to the story when they're this clumsily implemented. One would hope that if this was part of the conceptualization process for the 'verse of Persona 3, they just simply missed the landing on getting this guy to come across right. Regardless, I do think the ultimate conclusion to the storyline is cute if nothing else. I'll have the FES cutscenes uploaded soon, and then the LP will be coming to an end this Friday!
Extra Notes
-Erebus is almost laughably easy in FES, to the point where I decided to not do any additional training or prep work and just rolled into the battle with what I had. It made it a little dicey, which probably made for a more interesting battle. There's not really much else to do besides grind for the final boss at this point. The only additional quest in The Answer is killing the Reaper, which has no reward beyond the satisfaction of beating him. Since preparing to beat him without relying on Thunder Reign cheese would make us way overpowered for Erebus, I just decided to eschew it. If you're not feeling confident, learning the final skills of your desired party and outfitting them with the best gear Kurosawa sells is more than adequate prep for the Erebus battle.
-Erebus has been buffed with double actions in Reload, but because we can just spam out much greater damage, the fight ends up being even more of a formality here. We'll definitely be cutting our teeth more next time as we tackle the Monad Chambers.
With the story concluded, it's time for a bonus part double feature! First and foremost,
The remaining FES cutscenes! As Resurgam pointed out, the resolution of the SEES schism hits a lot harder here, though while I generally prefer the dialogue in FES I do think the anime scene at the end with Aigis leaving the dorm behind is much nicer in Reload. Erebus is still dumb, but that aside I also got a decent chuckle when one of Akihiko's lines was mistakenly read out by Tara Platt instead. On a more gameplay related offering,
I've set the clear of the FES Elizabeth battle with no Orpheus Telos to public now, partially cause it's a fun capstone to the supplemental videos, partially because 39 is a shitty number to end on and this is something I already have that I can use to round out the playlist. I was drunk as fuck when I recorded this but arguably played it better than I did in the actual Elizabeth extravaganza in the main videos.
The remaining FES cutscenes! As Resurgam pointed out, the resolution of the SEES schism hits a lot harder here, though while I generally prefer the dialogue in FES I do think the anime scene at the end with Aigis leaving the dorm behind is much nicer in Reload. Erebus is still dumb, but that aside I also got a decent chuckle when one of Akihiko's lines was mistakenly read out by Tara Platt instead. On a more gameplay related offering,
I've set the clear of the FES Elizabeth battle with no Orpheus Telos to public now, partially cause it's a fun capstone to the supplemental videos, partially because 39 is a shitty number to end on and this is something I already have that I can use to round out the playlist. I was drunk as fuck when I recorded this but arguably played it better than I did in the actual Elizabeth extravaganza in the main videos.
After all this time, the final part is here! Episode Aigis decided to add just a bit of post-final boss content where there originally was none, meaning we get a call-forward and an absolute ball-buster of a battle at the same time! Since it only briefly came up before we rolled into the final boss last time, the Monad Chambers unlock upon reaching the end of Empyrean and completing Elizabeth's request to defeat the Reaper. You're free to tackle these before or after defeating Erebus, and the first four chambers are perfectly beatable with a set up similar to what I used for the final boss. The final chamber... well, that took me about half the time it takes to complete a normal playthrough to prepare for. I considered breaking down the various chamber battles in text form, but there's not really anything to say about them that I don't already cover in the video. The final fight though has a lot of moving parts, so it probably bears going deeper into detail on since it's not always obvious what I'm shooting for or what's about to happen in the video.
Masked Boy AKA Joker
What else to say but "Hoo boy." Episode Aigis tasks us with defeating a malignant spirit in the visage of Persona 5's main character, and this fight sucks and I hate it. It's as annoying to prepare for as Elizabeth with as many moving parts to consider, but now you have 3 extra characters to bring up to snuff for this challenge. Despite the extra hands you'll have compared to the Elizabeth battle, like that fight simply being at Level 99 is not enough for this. You're going to need a clear strategy to lay out as much damage as possible in an incredibly tight turn limit. Elizabeth gave us 80 turns to work with. Joker technically gives us 20, and in reality you have about 15 at most, likely around 12 or 13 at the least. Yeah, you can't just roll into this without at least a couple party members having capped stats. Before we get into what we can do to burn through a tremendous 32,000 HP as quick as possible, it's a good idea to layout the extensive rules of engagement for the battle and small bits of prep that might have slipped my mind in the video.
Before we get into the battle, two very important parts of prep aside from the stats and equipment I spent time grinding for were boosting Theurgy generation for our party. I snagged the Temperance Major Arcana, which speeds up charge by 30%. I also spammed buff/debuff spells with the rest of that party until their SP was under 50%, maxing out their charge rate. We can only really do meaningful damage with Theurgies in this fight, so charging them as quick as possible is crucial. As for rules of engagement,
-Joker operates on a 20 turn routine. If 20 turns elapse and he is not dead, he will do nothing but spam his signature party nuke Sinful Shell. If Joker falls below 18,000 HP before turn 11 of his routine, he will immediately jump to what he would do on that 11th turn, potentially cutting down the time remaining to win dramatically.
-Joker will also spam Sinful Shell if you have any Concentrate or Charge effects before he gets his first turn.
-Like the Elizabeth battle, your main character (in this case Aigis) cannot nullify, drain or repel any of Joker's damage options. Being immune to Ailments or Insta-Death is fine, but otherwise? Sinful Shell.
-Your party members, thankfully, are not beholden to this restriction, but you cannot have more than one nullification per turn. So say you were using Koromaru and Junpei and Joker uses a Fire skill? Sinful Shell.
-Use Armageddon and Joker is still alive to take a turn after? Sinful Shell.
Heartless Mode adds a couple extra quirks to this, adding additional challenge in a way the Elizabeth fight didn't have.
-Joker is immune to Critical hits, so that is no longer an avenue for extra damage. He's also immune to being Downed, further cutting into potential damage.
-Joker gets the first turn. This is arguably a good thing, because it means you can use Oracle on the first turn for Charge+Concentrate and not be killed for it.
-You may only use up to two debuffs on Joker at a time e.g. he can only have his Attack and Defense debuffed, but not his accuracy and evasion. Debilitate may still be used as a counter to Heat Riser, but use it on him when he's neutral/down for all his attributes? Sinful Shell.
There are a few more Heartless mode quirks, but they're applied to specific turns in his routine. As stated before, Joker has 32,000 HP and like Elizabeth and the final bosses, he gets two actions to a turn. He does have a spread of variable resistances depending on the Persona he has equipped, but unlike with Elizabeth it doesn't really matter as you're only going to deal meaningful damage with Theurgies. The Personae he uses are Arsene, Satan, Attis, Anubis, Siegfried, Mother Harlot, and if you fuck up immensely, Satanael. His routine is as follows,
Turn 1: Depends on if you have any buffs active or not when the battle starts. If you do, he'll use Dekaja followed by Heat Riser on himself. If you don't, he'll skip straight to Heat Riser followed by Concentrate. Even though your buffs are voided, you'll want them in effect because it's much better for him to use Concentrate next turn. As mentioned previously, Joker goes first on Heartless mode, which is a good thing since now you can use Oracle immediately to fish for Charge and Concentrate without being killed for it.
Turn 2: If Joker was able to Heat Riser and Concentrate on the previous turn, he will launch into two Megidolaons, the first one naturally hitting very hard. If he didn't Concentrate last turn, he will do so now and then fire one Megidolaon. Naturally, if you want to start this battle in a tenable situation, you want him to purge your buffs on the previous turn. It's not strictly necessary, but it requires far less Incense and Fortune Arcana farming.
Turns 3-5: Joker will now rotate through his Fire, Ice, Elec, Wind, Dark and Light skills. For the first 4 elements, he just decides randomly which ones to cast on which turn, but he'll always use one spell of each element. The Ice and Elec skills are the most dangerous due to the ailments they can inflict, and its why it's a good idea to have Insta-Heal (But NOT ailment immunity!) on Aigis plus Salvation to cure and heal anyone else who was tagged. On the fifth turn, he will always use a Light and Dark skill, with the second skill being an AOE Insta-Kill skill if you're playing on Heartless. This has a good chance of voiding any Enduring Soul passives you have as that passive takes precedence over Homunculi, and he'll always use an attacking skill to break Guards first. If Joker hits a weakness, he will do a single target follow up of the element he hit the weakness with on the downed character.
It's at this point where there's a more specific fork in Joker's behavior on Heartless mode. I won't go over his lower difficulty behaviors since it's not relevant to this video or LP, but I will shout out HayateButler's Steam guide for Elizabeth and Joker which has a full write up for all the relevant information for these fights plus quick kill strategies you can shoot for with or without DLC. I didn't follow his guide super closely aside from basic information gathering and free-styled my own approach (can you tell?) but this guide was very helpful to me in conquering this battle.
Turns 6-7: Joker will use Stagnant Air, followed by Poison Mist on Turn 6 and Sexy Dance followed by Megidolaon on Turn 7. There's a catch though! When it comes time for him to use Megidolaon, all party members must have an ailment, with at least one needing to be poisoned and at least one other being Charmed. If this is not the case, he will instead use Sinful Shell and likely end your battle. This is why we want to avoid full Ailment immunity, as otherwise this would be an unavoidable death point unless you can do enough damage to skip him to turn 11 in his routine. Not super likely outside of specific hyper offensive loadouts with a good dose of luck on top.
Turns 8-10: Joker will use Revolution to kick of this phase, and use each physical type once in a random order. On Turn 10, he will Charge and use a random Physical attack. If he scores a crit at any point, he will take the opportunity to use Heat Riser, or he will Charge if he is already fully buffed.
Turns 11-12: Joker will use another signature skill, Wings of Rebellion to start this phase. In the king of asshole moves, this will give him 3 actions per turn for the remainder of the battle. He will then follow a linear either/or action pattern depending on his current status, this being Dekaja/Heat Riser into Heat Riser/Marakunda, into Heat Riser/Marakunda/Concentrate/ Megidolaon into Concentrate/Megidolaon into a final Megidolaon. On Heartless mode, if you did over 16,000 HP of damage to him by this point, he will instead follow up Wings of Rebellion with Diarahan, essentially rendering the fight unwinnable as you will not be able to do enough damage before he starts spamming Sinful Shell three times per turn.
Turns 13-14: If you have immunities to Elec or Ice, Joker will use a corresponding Break followed by said element. If you have no immunities, he will instead do and Elec and Ice attack followed by a physical attack. Him using the break is much preferred, naturally. On turn 14, he will use Tetrakarn, followed by a Wind/Fire skill, followed by a Light/Dark skill.
Turns 15-16: On Heartless mode, if you are not able to win the fight during this phase, then you are almost guaranteed to lose here. Joker Will use Stagnant Air into Tentarfoo into Poison Mist, followed by Evil Smile into Sexy Dance and finishing with Megidolaon. Like the previous Ailment phase, everyone must have an ailment, and it must be one of each ailment that he uses. Meaning that you need a very specific combination of immunities and actions to even potentially make it out of this without Sinful Shell being triggered. This phase is why you effectively only have 12 turns to win on Heartless mode, as you'll likely get the skip to Wings of Rebellion and not be able to fulfill this borderline impossible condition.
Turns 17-20: If you somehow make it past the previous phase on Heartless mode, Joker just loops back to his turn 13 Routine (okay not quite if you read the guide, but you're not making it here if you're on a winning run regardless). Fail to beat him before turn 20, and he spams Sinful Shell endlessly.
So that is some not inconsiderable shit that's dumped on our lap. So what can we do here? In addition to the Theurgy set up, the party members I picked are the most effective for this encounter, or just about. Blaze of Life is the strongest Theurgy by a mile, and with capped offenses and the relevant boosts, Junpei can dramatically speed up this fight. Electric Onslaught is on the weaker end of Theurgies, but Akihiko's Buff Amp elevates and it charges ridiculously fast in boss fights due to his easy-to-fulfill charge condition. Metis is an ideal Anchor as she has no weaknesses, innate Enduring Soul and Phys Resist, and equipment that grants Firm Stance plus Strike boosting passives. These characters all have pretty good HP without proccing too many Fortune cards. Mitsuru can sub for Metis and often provide more chip with Diamond Dust, but Metis has slightly better Theurgy damage and makes a good item chucker, so I opted for her (plus it let me carry her through the whole playthrough.) For the rest of the party and why I didn't use them,
Ken: Good healing and utility with Dekaja, and Myriad Arrows is good chip with max ST, but Divine Intervention will just prompt Sinful Shell and Divine Retribution is towards the lower end of Theurgy damage. He'd also need Light Bracers to get the most out of it, which isn't a huge deal but does mean you have to sacrifice his accessory slot.
Koromaru: Hound of Hades is not bad, but we NEED Junpei, and they cannot be on the same team due to double nullifications when Joker uses a Fire spell causing Sinful Shell spam. Power Howling isn't super good here either as only Aigis, Metis and Junpei can use it in tandem with their Theurgy, and even if we could use it on Junpei, Joker's crit immunity neuters it horribly compared to Blaze of Life.
Yukari: So close to being a good pick, Tranquility would be excellent here, with Cyclone Arrow potentially coming in clutch. Unfortunately, Garudyne just doesn't cut it and Yukari's HP is the worst in the game, so you'd need to farm tons of Fortune cards to make sure she's able to avoid problematic health ranges off the back of a single turn. If she had Phanta Rhei, she might be worth considering, but alas.
So our goal here is to turtle up and cross-counter with Theurgies, making sure we do as close to 16k damage as possible without going over. Ideally, we can get a turn where we can chain Armageddon into a barrage of Theurgies and finish the battle before the Sinful Shell reprisal comes out. This was a pretty unlucky battle, it's definitely much preferred if Fuuka hits Charge and Concentrate over Heat Riser for Oracle. I wasn't able to get in much of any chip damage to speed the fight along, so I really had to be meticulous in my Theurgy usage and I almost tripped Diarahan. I didn't though, and I was able to clutch out until I got that coveted winning turn. Surprisingly, I got this on the first try in the recording, which I was not expecting at all because like I said this fight is miserable and I got unlucky at several points. I avoided unnecessary ailments for the most part though, and that's all that matters!
That is it for Persona 3! I'll probably post some final thoughts in a day or two, but for now I just want to pop some Champagne and kick back with the satisfaction of my accomplishment. This was by far the most intensive LP I've ever made, and even if I follow up on my Persona 4 LP tease (which I probably will), that won't even come close to this LP in scope or required effort for a variety of reasons. See you for my next major LP where I do a minimal grinding Story run of Disgaea 2 on PS2 while simultaneously doing all post game content on Disgaea 2 PC (this is not a joke or idle threat.)