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Chapter 67: 6/25: Glutton For Punishment (New)

This update covers content from Chapter 61 of the original LP.

Video: Junya Bael Kaneshiro

Music: Keeper of Lust

Cry all ya want, but I ain’t gonna forgive ya!

They’re naïve, they’re reckless, and on top of that, they don’t even realize how stupid they are. Now I couldn’t just sit back and not cash in on those idiots, right?

Here he is… My guardian robot!

Music: Blooming Villain

If you’ll recall, the original game’s version of this fight had a short preamble phase where you would fight Bael alone. That gets completely skipped in Royal, which is fine because that phase was pretty nothing.

A pig!?

It ain’t a pig, yo! This is my Palace’s swine-model defensive mechanoid, Piggytron!

For some reason it’s weird to me hearing a Palace ruler explicitly call their domain a “Palace.” It just kinda feels like that’s something that Igor and Mona and the like invented the nomenclature for.

Goin’ against me’s a real bad crime, ya know? It’s time for ya all to go to hell!

Dammit! I didn’t expect he’d have something like this up his sleeve!

Joker! Make sure you have us regroup if you think we’re at a disadvantage! That thing’s a giant… If it attacks us while we’re at low stamina, we won’t survive!

We’ll be using three Personas for this fight. Sui-Ki is our mainstay for damage, as it knows Double Fang and Double Shot. It also knows Rakunda, which we start off the fight with to lower Piggytron’s defense. We also have Nigi Mitama, which knows Media and Diarama and will be a massive boon to us given how hard some of this boss’ attacks hit.

Queen will serve a few different purposes here. We have her start off with a Marakukaja courtesy of the Crystal of Gluttony, but she doesn’t have the SP required to keep that active for the whole fight. Mostly, she’ll be casting Freila when she can, or Diarama if someone’s badly hurt.

Fox is going to be our primary damage dealer for much of this battle. Rising Slash is just categorically better than anything anyone else has in their repertoire even if he’s not going to be getting any Baton Passes to boost it. 161 damage with Rakunda is pretty good.

Skull… is unfortunately less useful in this stage of the fight. In an absurd twist of bad luck, Skull is actually only one trash battle worth of experience away from hitting level 26 and learning Assault Dive, his first Heavy Physical move. But because he’s not there yet, we’re forced to rely on Headbutt, which is only Medium (Fox’s Rising Slash is Heavy). For a lot of turns, we’re honestly going to be better off having him heal Fox with Champion’s Cup to boost his Attack at the same time.

In fact, the other two party members have reasons they’re not amazing for parts of this fight either. Queen’s Freila is only going to deal slightly more damage than Skull’s Headbutt here, and when we get further into the fight we’re going to wish she had her later skills that cure status ailments.

And as for Fox…

The boss knows a multitarget Fire attack, so he’s a bit of a hindrance at times, unfortunately.

The boss capitalizes on its free turn by using another AoE move.

And it also shoots Queen with its eye cannons.

I’m not sure I have the way it works quite solved because it’s a bit confusing, but this boss gets two turns. However, certain attacks will consume both of those turns. We’re not quite at that stage of the fight, though.

Champion’s Cup is still really useful at this stage of the game. Skull gets to heal Fox from those earlier attacks while also buffing his Attack.

Were ya talkin’ about me too when you said that? If you were… Imma tear ya all to shreds!

Well, let’s just guard.

It does almost nothing… at least, that time. We were guarding and had buffed Defense, so it’s to be expected.

316 damage, nice. That’s with Rakunda, Tarukaja (from Champion’s Cup) and Skull’s Raging Temper up. According to the Megaten wiki, Rakunda and Tarukaja each give an additional 40% damage that likely stacks multiplicatively, so that’s 1.4 times 1.4 times 1.4 equals 2.744 (the last 40% is from Raging Temper). If we take that one step further and divide 316, Fox’s damage from Rising Slash here, by 2.744, we get about 115, which is slightly more than the damage Skull was doing with Headbutt even with Rakunda. So if I did my math right (and I probably didn’t), Rising Slash is about 40% more powerful than Headbutt (or at least, Fox at full power is about 40% more powerful than Skull at full power at this exact moment. Interesting!

What do we do? Should we try distracting Kaneshiro!?

As you know, Kaneshiro is a money monger. Tossing an expensive item his way might draw his attention and serve as a distraction! Let’s give it a try, Joker! It’s your call what item we throw!

Joker! Let us throw an object to draw Kaneshiro’s attention!

D’okay.

As before, three options, but only one of them is right.

Gee, wonder which one. A lot of the time Skull would pull a Bead Chain for the “expensive item” and I would just balk because that’s legitimately too good at this stage of the game to literally throw away. Also, too good to actually expend by using it, but I digress. An Awake Incense is better, but a lot of that comes from my having forgotten what that item even is, what it does, or where I got it (it’s from the secondhand clothes shop in Kichijoji). Awake Incense is not actually an “incense” like those used to boost Persona stats in Lockdown, it’s a consumable item that cures all ailments for one ally. Not terrible, but not great either. Throw it!

Go collect it, Piggytron! R-Right away!

For some reason the “inside Piggytron” filter on Bael’s voice is playing here despite him being outside of it.

Th-This’ll make us a fortune! Damn good find, yo!

D-Did it work…!? We don’t need to worry about getting rushed now! Nice work, Joker!

So, now we have two turns to beat on Piggytron.

Maybe I can pick up a girl or two once I pawn this thing off…

Kaneshiro’s completely engrossed… Attack him while he’s off guard! It’s only right that a money monger like him is destroyed by money!

That’s a decent amount of damage.

My Piggytron’s gonna lose? No, that’s impossible!

And now he uses Fear Gas, one of the aforementioned attacks that will consume both of Bael’s turns.

Oh gross, dude!

Not cool, this is a family LP!

And it hits three of us, forcing me to spend 3/4 of the party’s turns this round forming a daisy chain using my limited supply of ailment healing items to cure each party member.

I looked at this image of Skull landing the final hit on Piggytron and had to review my footage because whatever shape I thought his torso was in here was confusing me so badly. Note for those trying to decipher this at home: that yellow thing that looks like it might be his hair is actually his right hand, he’s bending his body forward.

All right, Piggytron’s down.

But there’s still more fight to go.

They’re super duper powerful! And super duper fly!

Ugh, how is this dealing with us yourself? Hey, guys! Their numbers may be growing, but we can’t let that get to us! Let’s do this!

Lullaby is a multitarget attack that inflicts Sleep on whoever it hits.

Bael will follow it up by using Snap, a Gun attack, on a sleeping party member to inflict a Technical. Thankfully, this will also wake them up, and the attack itself deals very little damage (especially with Marakukaja up, as it is here) so it’s honestly better to just get hit, especially if Joker is the one asleep.

There are two henchmen here for us to deal with now. The one to the left of Bael is the Hitman-For-Hire, who will use Power Slash and Headbutt. He’s the main damage dealer.

The other one is the Bodyguard-For-Hire, who can’t do anything but pummel you with his shields. Seems simple enough, let’s ignore them and just take out Bael.

…Huh.

C’mooon, I told you they’re an invincible wall, right? Welcome to the power of cash! Booyah!

Hmmm… That shield move is a real hassle… We can try to take down those minions, but Kaneshiro’s not lying when he says they’re tough. …In that case, why don’t we just put them to sleep? If they’re not awake, they can’t get in our way! We’ll leave the tactics to you, Joker—but I don’t think it’s a bad plan, myself!

So, when Mona says they’re tough, he means it in a very particular sense. Because, no, these enemies just aren’t going to deal very much damage to you. For one, neither of them have any sort of multitarget attack. Maybe if you get really unlucky you could die from the Hitman-For-Hire getting a Technical hit on Joker while he’s asleep from Bael’s Lullaby, but that’s a bit of a stretch already. No, Mona means they’re tough in the sense that these bastards are gonna take a long-ass time to kill so you shouldn’t even bother.

The Hitman-For-Hire resists everything but Bless, which he drains. The Bodyguard-For-Hire resists everything but Curse, which he drains. You’re going to deal very little damage to either of them. Thankfully, as Mona suggested, all three enemies on the field right now are incredibly vulnerable to status effects (well, not Brainwash, Fear, or Despair, but all the other ones).

This is actually where Skull comes in rather handy for this fight. See, he has Physical skills that inflict Forget, preventing the enemy from using skills. If we hit the Hitman-For-Hire with those, that’s less damage going out.

Now, we actually don’t want to inflict Forget onto the Bodyguard-For-Hire because Forget doesn’t prevent him from blocking, and worse, it also prevents him from receiving another ailment. But if we do, all it takes is one attack of any type to snap them out of it and make them vulnerable again.

Bael here uses a skill called Guard Reward Up to raise the Defense of the Bodyguard-For-Hire. He can also raise the Attack of the Hitman-For-Hire with a skill called Kill Reward Up, but I didn’t see that on any of my three takes of this fight.

Here we see the third and final Persona we use in this fight, Phoenix. By some stroke of luck, we just fused this thing and it knows Dream Needle, a Light Gun attack that inflicts Sleep. We have five Sleep Vial Ses in our inventory that we could just throw at the Bodyguard-For-Hire to inflict Sleep automatically, but why waste those items I’ll never use otherwise when we can save them???????

Bodyguard is asleep, beat up Kaneshiro

(For the record, you do not have to put the Hitman to sleep. It has no equivalent to the Bodyguard’s blocking ability.)

Now that we’ve pacified the Bodyguard-For-Hire, we can also hit Bael with Forget, preventing him from putting the party to sleep with Lullaby. Skull turned out to be useful for this fight after all! Though, it’s a bit annoying that Bael also resists Physical. Kind of just dragging this thing out at this point.

If no one in the party is asleep after Lullaby, Bael will not use Snap and will instead just rub his hands together. Well, I think that’s how it works, I couldn’t actually confirm that.

I try Double Shot on Bael here only to find out that Bael blocks Gun attacks. Of course he does.

Whatever, let’s just get on with this.

Fox is doing work today.

Eventually, we really drive him into a corner.

F-Fine… It’s time for my last trump card! I’m gonna make it rain and party down! Ya dig!?

Psh, whatever man.

Ah christ

We’d better recover immediately so we’re prepared in case he does that again. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do that again immediately. Instead, he uses Lullaby to put Joker and Fox to sleep first. Then he uses Make it Rain again. I was legitimately pretty scared and worried that he would just one-shot Joker from the Technical hit.

This fear was ultimately unfounded. Sure, Bael knocks Joker down, but he survives with HP to spare. This is because, as I discovered upon looking up Bael’s moveset just now, Make it Rain deals a flat percentage of your current HP as damage. 70% across 10 hits. Not maximum HP. Current. It literally cannot kill you. What a joke.

Oh, going in for another try? Ha. I know your tricks, chucklefuck. I’m not scared of you!

Oh. Ha.

I’m just a little short on funds at the moment! C’mon, come back, yo!

His minions are nowhere to be seen… I guess relationships built on money don’t mean anything once the wealth dries up!

Cute. Though kind of derivative of the bit you already did with Shadow Okumura’s fight in the original release.

Shit, I screwed up…

Let’s finally finish this.

No more waiting!

OH SHIT

Hell yeah, Skull and Queen’s new Showtime activated. I couldn’t have scripted this better if I tried! Let’s go!

Video: Skull and Queen’s Showtime (Boss Version) (Watch this)

As the title of that video suggests, there are two versions of Showtimes: the regular one, and a “special” Showtime animation for certain important enemies. This is a main boss fight, so we’ll be seeing the “special” one. I think they have two versions because some boss fights (like the Sphinx in the next Palace) are just too large to put the model in, so they reanimated the entire thing to create a version where you don’t actually see the enemy within the Showtime itself. That’s my theory, anyway. We’ll show the normal version eventually once we get the chance, but this one in particular fucking rules so I’m glad we got to see it.