Well, that happened. Junpei deciding that he didn't want to go to Tartarus and disappearing, Akihiko joining our party and some other stuff about exams! Now, where were we?
Not a whole lot happens in school on the Wednesday, so let's use our after-school time to go see the Student Council! Got to gain more of a foothold in our bid for ULTIMATE POWER over the school. We find Hidetoshi talking to some teacher, who mutters about "for both our sakes" and wanders off. Do I smell a political rival? Hmm... Nope, he just wanted Hidetoshi to help create a better school environment. However, it seems he's going behind Mitsuru's back on this. Possible blackmail, eh? Excellent. Chihiro explains that there was a cigarette butt in the boy's bathroom, so the teacher enlisted the help of the student council to find the one responsible. And here I thought it would be something exciting or something. Hidetoshi is all for it, but another member of the council wants to consult Mitsuru first. Apparently listening to Hidetoshi's nigh-dictatorship-paranoia gives us another social link rank. O-kay... Whatever, another rank up is always nice. Either way, we'll need to keep an eye on Hidetoshi, just in case he decides to launch his own bid for power. Can't have that, oh no...
We head on back to the dorm to find Junpei crawling back to us. They all do in the end. Anyway, with that little annoyance out of the way, we're all free to head over to Tartarus for the night. So without further ado, let's go see what Akihiko can do! One battle in and I immediately regret giving Yukari the high-cut armour. Seriously, she looks like she wandered off the set of some grimy B-movie. Kinda creepy. Oh well, it ups her defence by a few notches, so there's that. We head on up to the 17th floor to have a proper look around the new area of Tartarus. The bloodied hallways and school-like interiors have been swapped with something out of a Gothic architect's wet dream, and the music has been remixed a little bit. Instead of the sickly green glow, we now have a pink-ish filter across our screen. Faces are carved into the walls at random intervals as well, which is slightly unsettling. Along the way we encounter some odd new enemies - some lions with balls attached to them, known as Wild Beasts and some floating cloaks with masks and lanterns inside them, known as Phantom Mages. They both go down easily enough, though.
I suppose at this point I should talk about Akihiko. He uses fists as a weapon, or rather spiked gloves, making him rather accurate, but not great in damage dealing. His Persona goes by the name of Polydeuces, and looks like a gigantic suit of armour with a pen attached to one arm. That's about part for the course in Atlus games. It is weak to ice, but strong against electricity. Cool, could do with a good electric Persona. All in all, a fairly neat addition to our team.
We gain another level during the 18th floor exploration, mostly due to our utter curb-stomping of everything in the floor. Having a fourth member really does help speed progress. Unfortunately, this luck runs out as we encounter our first red Shadow; a pair of Shadows called Steel Gigas which look like Hulk Hogan if he were splashed with black paint. They hit HARD, as it turns out, even with strength-dampening things, not to mention taking a while to kill. They go down after a good while, though, giving us a hard-earned victory and a bunch of EXP for our troubles. The rest of the floor goes fairly easily, really. At the 20th floor we get a call from Mitsuru, telling us about a source of great power on the 25th floor. Another boss, and pretty high up this time. Well, we'll get to him in good time. It's on the 20th floor that I learn that those Phantom Mages are to be taken down ASAP, as they have an instant death move which took out poor Junpei before we could finish the fight. Nasty.
Alas, we're forced to stop our adventuring for the time being, as poor Minato's all tuckered out from his merciless Shadow beatdowns. Unfortunately, finding an exit out of here is proving extremely difficult, since the stupid access points really don't want to spawn in. In my frustration I decide to just speed-run up to the 25th floor. At least then I'll have a way to get to the boss quickly once I feel I'm ready. Once again the boss area is very similar to how it was on the previous block, right down to the layout. At least Tartarus is keeping that consistent. With the access point activated, I choose to call it a day. Had a good time beating up Shadows, everyone leveled up at least once and my wallet is considerably fatter. So until next time, I wish you a happy Shadow-murder-mas!
