Toggle Background Color

Chapter 32: 5/18: Trait Of Mind (New)

This update contains content from Part 31 of the original LP.

Music: A Woman




Then we send the callin’ card. Yeah, yeah, we know the drill. Anyways, let’s get ready!






Hm?

Music: Aria of the Soul



Your rehabilitation seems to be going smoothly.



Heh… Has it, now?

Don’t sound so thrilled, Yaldy.

I’ve prepared a special gift for you. I must reward such valiant efforts. Use this power well…

Oh boy, new gameplay systems to make this game even easier!






Your Personas are born from the masks of your heart. They come in all manner of shapes and sizes. You must master the inner workings of each Persona to draw out its power. Do that, and they will surely be of great use to you on your journey to rehabilitation.
If you have other business, you may tend to it now.



So… Traits. These are bonus little modifiers for a Persona that change certain aspects of how they work. Mokoi, for instance, always has Rain/Snow/Pollen Warning in effect when we enter Mementos. That’s… okay, I suppose.



Much better is something like Obariyon’s Striking Weight, which strengthens Physical skills by 20%.





These are the rest of the Traits for the Personas Maaku has at present. Two of them are even the same, because they’re not totally unique to each Persona. We can transfer Traits through fusion, but a Persona can only have one Trait, and once you fuse a Persona, its Trait is locked in permanently (unless you fuse it again and give it a different Trait, obviously). We’ll see that in action in a bit once we do some fusing. That’ll come later, though.

Traits are really neat in my opinion. Maaku’s Personas don’t tend to have really crazy Traits (at least, not yet), so they’re not worth really overthinking or trying too hard to minmax. Instead, they’re just nifty ways to diversify Personas further and add a small extra wrinkle to fusion.

Music: A Woman




Get with the program, all right? You’re a vital member of the team here!

We can head into the Palace now, but first, let’s check out the Traits for our party members, because they get them too!



Remember what I said about Maaku’s Personas not having anything too wild for their Traits? Yeah, ignore that for your party members. Their Traits are fucking incredible and apply party-wide modifiers (though some of them only have a chance to activate). Captain Kidd’s Raging Temper is instantly amazing, giving 40% extra bonus physical damage when it activates. “Physical attacks” here is a little vague, but rest assured: it’s not limited to melee attacks, it works on Physical skills as well. It would be terrible if not.



Zorro has Proud Presence, which is not a chance to activate but just a straight-up bonus to the potency of healing skills. This is… very good. Media only heals about 50 HP per person at present, and this will boost it to about 75. Though, I believe this only applies in battle, so healing out of battle will still use more SP.



Finally, Carmen’s Trait is Mastery of Magic, which has a chance to decrease the SP cost of magic skills while Panther is in the party. That’s the rub: you obviously need to have someone in your party for their Trait to activate. Along with the accessory revamp, it’s another way Royal actually tries to shake the player out of complacently sticking to the same tired equipment and party setups that I really appreciated.



With that out of the way, let’s head inside.



Start out in the gallery with the laser beams, check…





I feel like the money rewards from negotiation are more consistently good in Royal. That could be total wishful thinking, but whatever. I’m going to be asking for money a lot because we’re gonna need it for aojiru and, eventually, Kawakami.



Let’s try out this cool new piece we got.



So, the cool thing about Shock is that you can get Technicals off it with Gun or Physical damage (you can do the same thing with Freeze). Gun damage. And this gun inflicts Shock. Also, Technicals now have a chance of knocking down the enemy. See where I’m going with this? Basically, we can inflict Shock by shooting this enemy and then immediately knock it down with a second bullet. This can be a huge boon in battles with enemies with obscure or non-existent weaknesses. However… there’s a “however.”






See, if the enemy is suffering from Freeze, Shock, Confuse, or Sleep, they’re unable to be negotiated with. This is… kind of a problem if you want to grab a Persona using this method, especially because you can’t even remove Shock yourself by attacking the enemy! It’s great for easy All-Out Attacks, but unfortunately it doesn’t really work to grab masks.

For the record, other ailments can affect negotiation as well. Rage, Despair, Dizzy, and Forget will be automatically cured if you try to negotiate, but the negotiation will simply continue unaffected from that point. Brainwash adds special options to the negotiation. Fear causes the enemy to run away if you try to negotiate. In fact, the only ailment that has no effect on negotiation is Burn.



Oh hey, glowy hand! You know what that means!



There’s a laser grid crisscrossing this hallway that wasn’t there in the original game. Let’s get through it in style.






Further in, we run into a small thing while trying to recruit this Apsaras.



Thanks for the help, Mona. I’m just going to skip the first question though because for some reason it doesn’t actually affect anything! Only the second question matters!






Uh oh.





What’s this? This Shadow qualifies as “female,” so Panther’s Girl Talk procced and gave us another chance!







And it ended up saving our asses in that negotiation. Cool.



Further in, we pass the first safe room and enter an area that isn’t quite new, but that has been remodeled a touch.



These Shiisaa are new but don’t do anything besides attack and use Frei (Nuke). They’re strong against Physical, null Bless, and are weak against Psy and Curse. They’re also Level 15 while we’re Level 12, so they’re kind of a pain to take down given the Physical resistance and the fact that the only Persona we’ve encountered so far that can hit its weakness is Arsène, which we have long since benched.




The Red Shadow for this section is Shiki-Ouji, an annoying foe because it nulls Physical and Gun. That plus its Double Shot being enough to very nearly one-shot any party member makes it pretty dangerous. Thankfully, I get pretty lucky with my Bufus and Zios inflicting Freeze and Shock, so it doesn’t get many turns to use that shit.



An optional grapple point up here! Intriguing…



We can drop into another room from here that has two treasure chests in it.



The first, marginally more hidden one has nothing special, but…




The second one absolutely does. We swap that Atom Ring onto Joker.



You guys don’t mind if I skip the whole dumb “Mona grabbed the shiny and now there’s fucking laser beams everywhere” bit, right? Let’s just get straight to the Treasure Demon.




…Which I fail to kill because I don’t think to try Joker’s brand new Nuke skill on it, which it ends up being weak to! I’m an idiot!




Whatever, let’s head to the next safe room and head out for a minute, I wanna fuse some stuff.

Music: Aria of the Soul



Okay, Jack Frost from Berith and Apsaras. He’s not actually T-posing, by the way, he’s just jumping around because he’s a fun little winter imp.



Traits are capable of being inherited during fusion. Should you make use of this properly, you could very well conclude with a nigh-unstoppable Persona. However, some special Traits cannot be inherited. In any case, only one Trait can be inherited during fusion, so choose carefully…



So, in a standard two-Persona fusion, you can always pick from three Traits: each of the component Persona’s Traits, and the result Persona’s base Trait. Now, you may ask: “What if two of the relevant Personas have the same Trait?” Well, I’m glad you asked! We’ll get to that… later in the update!

Internal Hypnosis increases the effect period of support skills on Joker by one turn, and Crisis Control decreases damage from attacks that hit Joker’s weakness. Neither of those seem as appealing as Frigid Bloodline to me, so we’ll take that one.



I love that this tic has survived localization for this long, you’d think they’d get rid of it for… obvious reasons, but no, it’s stayed.



Anyway, it levels up and learns the Mabufu we need.




That Persona… Hey, sit right there!

Strength Rank 1: Part 33

Because it was inevitable that we were going to badly desync the Confidant Ranks from the dates we originally did them, I have decided to just place the update each of them appeared in at the start when this desync occurs. Truth be told, this desync has most likely already happened and I just didn’t notice, but I’m putting the information about this here now, what’re you gonna do about it?



We’ll take it, but your Personas suck dude. Trash-tier. My grandma could make better Personas than you, and I just made her up!
In order to make your Personas less awful, we’re giving you access to a new facility. Please don’t squander it like you are now. If you keep completing our requests, we will continue providing new facilities so you can hopefully suck less at this.
Keep working and you’ll get more freedom! It’s a deal between us wardens and you, the inmate! Not like you can turn it down, though! All you’re good for is work!



This might be the drugs talking, but why do you keep muttering about “the devil children who will come for me in my sleep”?
Huh?
“Oh god, oh god, they’re beating me with the batons,” “What do the letters mean?” “Why are they wearing shorts?” You repeated that last one a lot.
You don’t understand, the shorts are both too large and not large enough!
You know what, maybe we should just drop this line of questioning…






Music: A Woman



Let’s continue in the Palace.



Panther learns Maragi, cool.



Exploring the ladies’ bathroom, cool.





Getting trapped in here with enemies, cool.




Mona learns Lucky Punch here.




Proud Presence’s healing boost stacks nicely with Baton Pass.





The way out of this room is honestly a little annoying to find. You have to climb up this display and grapple over, simple enough…



But then you have to notice this panel on the wall right next to a locked door that’s going to absorb most of your attention. It’s not a huge deal, it’s just weird that this game chooses now of all times to do something subtly.



And the doors open.



But there’s a Will Seed nearby, so we look for that.



Gotta cross this light to get there.




Got the Will Seed.






We’re just about at the end of this infiltration.



This sign says… “This door is unopenable from the outside.”
Uh, is that bad?
This pattern… it must be that door I saw before! Guys, let’s leave! I have a plan!
D’okay.



Now, let’s head back to the Velvet Room.

Music: Aria of the Soul



We’re gonna fuse a Kodama from Agathion and Berith. We’ll give it Zio and Rakukaja.



We’ll also give it Skillful Combo.




Next, Archangel from Kodama and Hua Po. We give it Rakukaja and Agi.



We also have the choice between Striking Weight, Skillful Combo, and Thermal Conduct for its Trait. Striking Weight is actually a “bonus” Trait, available because two of the relevant Personas have the same Trait and there need to be three available. Thermal Conduct increases the chance of inflicting Burn after a Baton Pass, which is terrible. We’ll be going with Striking Weight instead.




Also on the list is Onmoraki from Slime and Kodama.



Onmoraki gets Intense Focus.





Lastly, Ippon-Datara from Mokoi and Jack Frost, inheriting Dazzler, Rakunda, and Skull Cracker.




Music: A Woman





Music: Wicked Plan

I told you, I have a plan! This shack is the basis for the Palace, so that door must correspond to some aspect of it. And, I just so happened to spot a door that looked just like that one during my reconnaissance earlier. If we can open that door in front of Madarame’s eyes, the door in the Palace should open too!
How the hell’s that work!?
It’s just his cognition that the door is unopenable. If we can change that cognition by having him see that the door was opened, his cognition will change.
Sure, let’s tack on some new rules to this nonsense. Why not?
But isn’t it locked? How are we going to get it open?
Don’t worry about that! I’m a master lockpicker!
You don’t even have hands!
That’s just how skilled I am! Don’t worry, I can handle it. But I can’t do it alone. We’ll need someone who can distract Yusuke for a while…
*awkward silence*
I hate you guys.

Music: Beneath the Mask




Yes, I agreed to the modeling tomorrow.
Hell yeah!
Don’t sound so excited!
You’re not actually gonna get nude, though. You just gotta distract him for long enough to get the door open.
I still hate it!
Don’t worry. If there’s trouble, we’ll back you up ASAP.
Thanks.
>Actually, the cat just told me that Ryuji and I are gonna be in the Palace while that’s all going down, so… good luck!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH





Let’s do some crosswords.








Easy.




Maaku gains Knowledge +1.




Music: Knockoff of the X-Files Theme



Fake Gillian Anderson: Wolf (?), you can’t be serious. You think aliens did this?
Fake David Duchovny: I’ve heard it all before, Sculzy. But just look at these bodies. They can’t be from Earth!
It’s a story about an investigator who searches for the truth behind eerie, supernatural incidents…
The atmosphere of this show is so ominous. I’m getting creeped out…

Music: Everyday Days



I bet you’ve summoned a little more Guts by watching this drama.

Maaku gains Guts +2.