Persona series

No.

Oh, good.

Finished Sae's palace, or in other words, time for over an hour long of plot dump. The Traitor turns out to be the very blatantly suspicious Akechi. Like, even if I haven't been spoiled on that plot point, they threw so many hints about it. And yeah, pancakes.

The Thieves' plan are surprisingly good, considering their usual terribleness at thieving. They're already squarely above the Investigation Team in terms of competency.

I feel it's kinda awkward though that they keep freely talking about their plan in front of Sae and Sojiro, who probably has no idea of half the words they said. I also feel Sae's Heel–Face Turn happened quite abruptly.

Also, hilariously inappropriate Confidant rank up events.

Sae: Okay, I kinda believe you and sympathize with you

*THOU ART I I AM THOU JUDGEMENT ARCANA MAX*

Akechi: Mwahaha! I'm evil and I'm gonna kill you!

Joker: (I feel a stronger bond with Akechi) *Justice ranks up*

Okay, next target is Shido. Finally, another target that makes you feel like leaving footprints all over his face.

Not only that...

(Akechi murders a random cop in cold blood while making a disturbing as hell face)

Joker: I feel closer to you, Akechi-san.

The "payoff" with the twist isn't really supposed to be the identity of the traitor, but the Phantom Thieves' plan.

That being said I don't think it's a very good payoff when the idea of the traitor being someone you've spent a long time with and are attached to is far more compelling than the Phantom Thieves' little gambit.

I agree, but I liked the gambit. Too bad I loathe Alechis very existence.

Well I myself am not too concerned with spoilers here (this story is very linear despite all the interacting you can do), and I am not too surprised by it myself.

I am in Sae's Palace too and GEEEEZUS is it long! I think this may be the longest Palace to ever cover.

And this comes into an interesting thing: even if you're the best RGP player on Earth, you can no doubt get the hint that the Thieves aren't the best at thievery. It doesn't help that their guide is a creature who lost his memory and whose entire arc concerns finding out what the hell he IS.

Edited by kyun on Nov 23rd 2018 at 8:16:34 AM

Yeah. I was upset that I was spoiled who the traitor was... And then I played the game and it made zero attempt to hide it. That made me happier. The identity of the traitor was not a secret.

I think the fact that the thieves weren't totally dumbasses about it helped.

Joker and Mona remembering the Pancakes incident helped a lot...although it's funny to think that Akechi was probably completely sincere when he said that. It's actually really scary to think that if not for that one mistake, he'd have probably won.

Tbh the real traitor seemed like it was intended to be Yaldy who had been there from the beginning and actually provided use via thrir Confidant from the start. Whereas Akechi is so last minue you could remove him and change literally nothing.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Nov 23rd 2018 at 11:46:04 AM

@kyun Oh, sorry about the spoilers. I forgot you're also playing the game.

Speaking of Sae's Palace, fuck the dark room part. I don't need extra stress on my eyes.

Gonna reserve judgement on Akechi until I finish the game.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Nov 23rd 2018 at 9:57:37 AM

Eh I get to the game very in-frequently. Sometimes I play days in a row. Sometimes I forget to return to it for like a week.

Got to play all day today .

So I have all Confidants maxed out now, except Empress (9), Hanged Man (8), Tower (8), and Star (9). There's one week left until Shido's deadline. Hopefully I can manage to finish them. Thanks god we have Chihaya-spam.

Also is it just me or does Haru's confidant level really fast? I don't remember ever having to spend time or ask Chihaya for her. She also seems to have more point-giving questions than others.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Nov 25th 2018 at 7:55:24 AM

Yeah, I think they specifically made Haru's Co-op easy to max because of how late in the game it opens.

Good point. Her Confidant's the absolute last you'll unlock in a standard play.

Anyway, does Shido's Palace work like P4's Magatsu Inaba, as in the game skips to the final day when you finish the dungeon?

No, it does not.

So, in Persona 3, I have a little over 67 hours so far. I'm on the final week and have 6 days left. I can't wait to finish this game. I'm level 72 so far and the rest of my party are in the late 60's-early 70's or late 50's. I'm going to try to grind a bit but I think I'll be fine. I'm also working on what social links I have.

Good. I'll have at least a week to finish the Confidants then.

Done with Shido's Palace, only the calling card left.

Honestly, the mouse puzzles aren't as bad as what the YMMV page says. Just...maybe not have four floors of them? That gets old fast. Individually they're pretty easy though, especially the last one.

I'm starting to learn Ma-dyne spells, and man it's starting to outrun SP Adhesive 3 at an alarming pace. Futaba's SP restoration is pretty pathetic as well...I remember at this point in P4 you have Cool Breeze to help, but is there any equivalent of that in here?

Having three boss battles back to back sucks. Am I missing something or did you just get thrusted into Akechi battles right after you beat the cleaner? Without the chance to save? That's brutal. Joker has below 100 SP the entire time.

There's also Akechi's backstory dump. To be honest I can't really bring myself to care about his Villainous Breakdown. He hasn't really done anything except be "that dude who's really obviously the traitor". Heck, even Adachi in vanilla P4 had more relatable moments before the reveal. Heh, for extra humiliation I purposefully let Ryuji dealt the killing blow. With a normal attack.

If Akechi did anything, it's only to reinforce that Shido is a gigantic asshole...which literally everything else already show you.

I gotta say that while I like him, I like him for the whole "conscious at some level he's fucked up horribly and geniunely liked the group and wish he would've met them sooner" thing but the problem also is that this is introduced in the same sequence where he dies and therefore the game doesn't do anything with it. I think I like the premise and the concept and where they could have decided to go with that more than the character himself.

Akechi's character on the whole is a pretty big miss. The horrible things he does are too numerous and awful to merit the sympathy the game and characters give him. Part of it is that his "bastard child" shtick has more resonance in Japan due to the way japanese law and society treats them, but that doesn't really mean anything to me and even beyond that there's still problems regardless of any cultural divide.

Yeah, it's a matter of execution. Had we been able to spend more time with Akechi, that scene could have been more impactful. As it is, it came off as a badly rushed job to tie up his subplot.

The problem is that his character arc is smushed into pretty much two or three scenes and that's it. There's no reason for it to be that way — you first hear about the "black-masked persona user" way back in the second palace. There's plenty of time to draw that plot out, they just do nothing with it except reminding you that he exists every so often for a while. They should have built it up slowly — you hear about him in the second palace, see him doing something in the third, skip the fourth (Futaba's) because it's not connected to the rest, fight him in the fifth, then have the sixth and seventh go mostly as they did.

What actually happens is that you hear about him in the second palace, see nothing of him for the third and fourth, he shows up to the player (not the characters) at the very end of the fifth, and then all his actual development is crammed into the sixth and seventh (particularly the seventh), which is just dumb.

I felt like it would have been better to keep Akechi as an unrepentant asshole with some genuine respect towards MC. Either make him a better Dragon to Shido, or maybe set up some Enemy Mine situation, if you want him to get some sympathy points... I think that, good or bad, I would feel at least something for him in those scenarios. But the way the game blatantly expects me to sympathise with a massmurderer whose motive is basically "I want my dad to suffer so I will help him to achieve his goals by killing tons of people" is just... I don't know how anyone can find this sympathetic. His last stand is one of the weakest parts of the game.

"We're at the point where you need to write Akechi and Shido being the villains. Can you do it by Monday?"

"Ooooooo ... ssssorry I'm out. Get that intern to write it."