Once more into the breach! Thanks for sticking around this long, folks. I suspect updates shall become less huge as time goes on, since we're still in the tutorial, really.
Anyway, we make our way back to school the following morning only to get grabbed by Junpei. He's pretty energetic, despite probably being a coffin the night before. Huh. Apparently he has a secret for us, but he's not supposed to say anything. Clearly covering for his ghost-chatting friend. It sucks to be the new kid.
We make our way to class, only for the classic lit teacher to whine about how nobody cares about classic literature any more, even going so far as to say that nobody understands it. I wasn't aware that classic lit was a 13 year old emo kid. We're given the opportunity to catch some shut-eye from the boring-ness of this lecture, but Minato's a good boy, so he's going to keep those peepers open. The poor teacher tries, bless him, but even using '90s style catch-phrases fails to grab the class's attention. But hey, for actually paying attention we get a boost to our Academics! Neat!
We walk on home with Junpei after school, only to be greeted with an angry looking clock that ticks on to midnight before... exploding, I guess? We cut from our sleeping "beauty" to Shuji and the gang and their stalking operation. On a side note, I am really digging the music for this game. The music playing for the Dark Hour observing does a great job at creating this tense, oppressive atmosphere, and the Velvet Room music has this air of ehterial sophistication about it that I rather like. Anyway, we're apparently just the same as we were last night, which interests Shuji for reasons I can't fathom. Apparently we've not exhibited any common symptoms from having "the potential". Clearly Shuji is unaware of our Main Character status. Yukari's still unhappy about it all, but Shuji explains how important it is that they recruit new members. Apparently he's never heard of a pamphlet.
Suddenly, Misturu gets a ping on her machine, which I guess means an incoming message. It's Akihiko, who's apparently getting chased by... something. Fortunately, he's almost at... the room... with the huge thing chasing him... Not the brightest of sparks, is he? Mitsuru and Yukari get ready to fight only for Aki (yes, I'm calling him Aki, get used to it) to burst through the door. Apparently he's brought a rather special THEM with him, so that's fun. Good thing we're still blissfully asleep at the moment! Mitsuru takes charge, telling Yukari to... go wake us up. -Sigh- I knew we were getting off easy. Mitsuru and Aki stay behind to fight it off, but my TUTORIAL FIGHT senses are tingling, so they are unlikely to succeed.
We awake to all the commotion and, because we appparently are dumber than a box of genre-dumb rocks, go investigating. Maybe we'll find some ghosts or something. Before we can get out, though, Yukari bashes on our door and barges in, telling us that we need to get out. We try to ask what's going on, but the monster above us apparently doesn't like exposition before time. We prepare to escape, but then Yukari stops us to... give us a short sword?! I wasn't aware that weaponry was a part of the school uniform. We head off and seem to have made it out, but Yukari does exactly the wrong thing and says "we should be safe now". Right on cue, Mitsuru lets Yukari know via communicator that there's more than one enemy. Goodie! Suddenly, the door behind us crashes ominously, leading to us fleeing for our lives. Again.
We try running upstairs, which in hindsight was a fairly terrible idea, since now they're downstairs and have thus cut off our only means of escape. The solution? Go up even higher! Higher and higher upwards we go, chased by some monstrous thing. On the plus side, we finally have a few seconds of control! However, that's quickly wrenched away from us to prepare us for the TUTORIAL FIGHT! We make it up to the roof, only for Yukari to jinx us YET AGAIN by saying that we should be okay for now. Le sigh. Yeah, turns out the things can climb. And this thing is apparently a creature with far too many limbs and a blade for each one. Also they were masks. Yukari tells us that these are shadows, and they're the things that Shuji's group fights.
Yukari tries for the easy way out, only to get the fun smacked from her hands as she's knocked to one side. However, with the goading of ghost-boy, we decide to take up her gun and, well... apparently saying "Persona" while shooting yourself makes a monster called "Opherus, master of strings" appear and eat up shadows. Fun times. Shuji and co look on from the observation room, having apparently killed their shadow easily. This is supposedly not something that happens every day, judging by their shock. We cut back to Minato, who, while able to take on the first Shadow with ease, is faced with still more.
And so begins our first fight. We have several abilities to choose from, "Attack" (does what it says on the tin), "Skill" which summon Personas to do stuff, "Item", which lets us use items (duh), "Tactics" which gives instructions to allies, "Persona", which lets us shift Personas, "Wait", which skips a turn and finally "Escape", meaning we run from battle. Being the studly studs that we are, we quickly take out our attackers and get some EXP for it. We do of course immediately level up, since this is a tutorial fight and all tutorial fights involve a level-up at some point. Something to note is that Personas (that's the things you get when you hold a gun to your head and say "Persona") also gain EXP, and learn new skills as they level up.
After battle, we immediately pass out since that's what mysterious protagonists do upon discovering their powers. Mitsuru and Aki arrive a little too late to help (lousy slow -unintelligible grumbling-) and everything fades to cutscene. Unfortunately, we've swapped one nightmare reality for another, as we find ourselves in the Velvet Room. Igor explains that we passed out after summoning our Personas and explains that Personas are manifestations of our pschye, whatever that means. He then goes on to call our power weak, which we of course take offence to. This prompts him to go on about social links (bonds with people that you meet), which strengthen the "inner power" as they grow and develop. Thankfully our visit to the Velvet Room is quick this time, and so we return to sweet, non-long-nosed reality.
We awaken to find Yukari sitting beside us and... oh dear. We're in a hospital bed. She explains that we've been asleep an entire week (sounds about right for me) and that she worried about us. Aww. Yukari goes on to apologise for not protecting us, then gushes about how STRONG we are. She also gives us some exposition on Shadows and Personas, mostly in case you missed it during the cutscene. And hey, seems Yukari also suffers from MY PARENTS ARE DEAD syndrome. Her dad died when she was young and her mother and her don't speak much. Fun times. Apparently Yukari's dad died in '99 as well, due to some explosion. Coincidence? I think not! It also turns out that Yukari's investigating the blast, and the roof event was her first time fighting Shadows as well. That explains a lot, really.
We immediately cut to the next day, where we're asked by Yukari how we are. Being the strong, manly man that we are, we of course say that we're doing fine. She also wants us to go to the fourth floor of the dorm room, since Shuji wants to chat with us. I smell the end of this tutorial! But before that, lots of class still to go. Oh, by the way, the guy with the kabuto helm? Turns out he's one of our teachers. I'm immediately worried, and this worry only deepens when he slags off mammoths. Seems he's bummed about not being able to teach us about samurai. He then grabs Junpei for another question, which he immediately asks us for the answer of. By getting another random question right, we earn both the respect of our peers and some more charm. Woo!
We head on home once more, this time through the shopping mall again. Totally not giving us sneak peaks at these places for when the game opens up, no sir! Upon returning to the lodge we FINALLY get another opportunity to save. We haven't been able to do this since our first day, you know! Not cool, Atlus. Not cool at all. But now that we've saved, I think it's time I call it a day for the time being. I hope you folks enjoyed these parts, and I'll see you again soon!
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