Persona 3 FES Part #80 - 11/03/09: In the Shadow of a Bewitching Moon

Part 80: 11/03/09: In the Shadow of a Bewitching Moon

So, here we are. The final full moon, huh? We'll just do the usual and just spend the day doing [scene missing] until the Dark Hour arrives.

...That we got to do things on the same day as the second full moon operation was a really weird outlier, in hindsight. Odd how that happened.

The Voice Someone Calls

The 12th and final Shadow.

Hmmm. This is it...

And as we expected, there are two Persona-users nearby...

They know this is their last chance. Even though we were expecting this, we should still be careful.

Those bastards...

Hmph. Saves us the trouble of looking for them.

You've all done a fine job up to this point.

This will be our last operation. Let's all come back safely.

> The final battle is here...

> The last Shadow and Strega await you.

> Strategy weighs heavily on your mind as you prepare to select your allies...

So, here's the loosest and simplest outline of my strategy here.

Here's Barong. Say "hi", Barong! Barong is nice enough to naturally learn Auto-Marakukaja. When we fused him a while back (which you probably don't remember but that's fine) he was nice enough to give us Auto-Matarukaja via a skill change. The general use of these is debatable overall, but I sure do like 'em since I'm fairly lazy and anything that makes me take less time is better.

We'll be starting off with him active as a result of this.

Anyway, we're going to tackle tonight with the ultimate team of president, robot and dog. Koromaru's getting the Agni Bracer off of Junpei, and Mitsuru and Aigis have specially made new weapons from the Antiques store.

They're not unique or anything, so you didn't really miss anything. They're just decently high attack and have +evasion for their weaknesses.

Please be careful.

Alright, well, we're all done here. Let's begin the operation!

Okay... Be careful.

...Let's go!

In the Shadow of a Bewitching Moon

> But first, there are two powerful adversaries you must contend with.

You claim you hunt the Shadows to prevent the disaster they bring...

Yet, countless lives are lost each day without their intervention...

So why don't you just admit it? You do not wish to eliminate the Dark Hour...

You are merely deceiving yourselves...

Who cares?

You are indeed foolish children...

Erasing the Dark Hour is the same as erasing yourselves.

Tch. Is even that beyond your comprehension?

As I believed, our goals are irreconcilable.

That Which Comes From The Darkness

Forget these maggots.

Fate shall decide who will prevail.

...Come.

Strega (Portable)

Unavoidable Battle

Strega. We've crossed paths several times now. They've had some questionable and borderline pointless plans, some actual effective moves and their entire introduction gimmick of the revenge request thing was dropped just as suddenly as it came.

Strega is a weird name for the trio, since it's just an Italian word that literally means "Witch." Insofar as we know, it has no deeper meaning here.

Despite having Makoto's awakening theme as the battle theme, Strega are not really all that impressive in combat. Which I guess is fitting, since they weren't even all that impressive out of combat either.

You might think dropping Thunder Calls on them for nearly 500 damage and guaranteeing a Stun is excessive and having that capability at all means we're overlevelled. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.

Mitsuru's not much of a physical fighter, but she can certainly leave a mark between the Tarukaja, guaranteed Crit and her rad new sword.

...I mostly just did this because it shows off Jin's really cool animation for getting up, though. Jin has some nice breakdancing/capoeira-esque movements despite holding a briefcase and tossing a grenade up and down like a baseball the entire time.

Let's be honest, though, opting to not AOA them was kinda showing mercy where it was maybe not needed. If we really tried, we could cut through these guys in no time whatsoever.

Takaya Sakaki is statistically not all that impressive, doesn't have many moves and his lack of any real resistances is a bit of a disappointment.

Takaya has 1500HP and... a lot of SP. He has 35 Strength, 35 Magic, 35 Endurance, 31 Agility and 30 Luck.

Attack-wise, Takaya is incredibly simple as well. Sure, he can leverage his strength for a Pierce elemental attack...

But he's mostly just a straight forward mage.

It's honestly really kinda odd and feels out of place.

He can utilise all four single target dynes, naturally.

He also apparently has both Mind Charge (of course) and Megido giving him something he can do that's MT but good Lord does he not like using either of them. I even threw up a Magic Mirror and he didn't even try to Megido.

After losing approx. 1/3rd to half his health, Takaya makes a little quip before attacking again.

Astonishing... Perhaps I misjudged your strength.

He does the same around the 2/3rds mark...

And once again if he manages to get a turn while in critical HP.

Takaya's Persona is Hypnos of the Fortune arcana. Hypnos is the personification of sleep itself (which makes Takaya being a bit murder-happy an interesting way of depicting that), and he lives in the underworld with his brother, Thanatos. Of course, Hypnos has many, many, many other siblings including Nemesis (Ken's original Persona, so there's some intended symbolism right there).

Jin Shirato is both really similar to Takaya (to the point that he manages to confuse Juno and get the wrong arcana to display) and yet also different enough to be technically more difficult... maybe. Sorta. Sometimes.

He repels Fire which already gives him an advantage, but he also has 1500 HP, A Lot of SP, 35 Strength/Magic/Endurance, 31 Agility and 30 Luck.

Jin is both a little less and little more varied than Takaya in terms of what he can do. Since his weapon of choice is a grenade, it's cleverly Fire elemental. This means Magic Mirrors are actually really good at negating almost everything in this fight, since they affect this too. Takaya's gun is the only thing that isn't repelled by Makarakarn. Neat!

Unlike Takaya, Jin has a direct buff but no Charge skill. Also unlike Takaya, Jin remembers to use his.

Jin's only skill that deals direct damage is Maragion. It's... really not that impressive even without Marakukajas, honestly.

His other skills are Mudo and Mudoon. I guess they might be a bit threatening if you somehow don't have Curse resistance and don't have any Homunculi.

Much like Takaya, Jin gets a bit chatty after you wail on him for a bit. It's really funny seeing him be cocky and overly-arrogant when he's on the ground, stunned.

And then again after you hit him around some more.

Jin's Persona is Moros of the Hermit arcana. Moros is one of the many siblings of Hypnos mentioned above, which combined with their Expel/Curse resistances gives an interesting yin/yang effect to the pair. Moros is the personification of doom itself and is thus considered the "leader" of the Moirai as a result of this.

But hell, who cares about that. Lookit that actual animation that Moros gets when doing stuff. That ain't fair that Jin gets something like that! Also note how Moros only has a left arm. That's kinda clever; Jin's clearly left-handed since he's always holding that silver case in his right hand while doing everything else with his left.

Since the pair are both level 53, the are worth an honestly disgusting amount of EXP. Surt even gets Ragnarok out of this!

The Voice Someone Calls

Is their power THAT different than ours...?

Different?

Didn't your pal tell you?

So it was you who was giving Shinji those pills.

You guys don't have the slightest clue what will happen if the Dark Hour disappears, do you?

It won't matter for normal people, since they don't remember anything anyway...

But for us--

That's enough.

...but not tonight.

Silence

This body, as ephemeral as it is... It is worthless without my power.

Don't be so reckless!

Jin!?

...Sorry.

But... those are your words, not mine.

You win... Looks like you'll get your wish...

Crisis

I'd rather die than surrender to you!

Take a good look! This is how we live!

So, Jin just stopped Takaya from... shooting himself in the head,telling him to not be reckless. So that he could drag him back, over the railing and off the bridge. Well, that's one way to end their involvement in stuff, I guess.

> Jin and Takaya disappeared into the blood-red sea below...

Silence

What the hell were they thinking!?

They chose their own fate. Don't let it faze you.

...The operation has only begun.

Our true adversary is waiting... Focus on that, alright?

End

The Voice Someone Calls

It'll be all over if you can defeat it.

I do like how you can see the Shadow hanging out in the sky here, for once. Every other time before the fight they've been implied to be visible but never for the player. Nice to get that here.

Anyway, we get a bit of a break here if you wanna change the party around any at this point. I did, ever-so-briefly, consider switching everyone out for the next 3 in line but nah. They'll do fine for this, since we get a free full heal between fights anyway for... some reason. You'd think this'd mean Strega would've gotten to be a difficult fight but alas, nope.

The Final Shadow

That Which Comes From The Darkness

So, as we approach, the Shadow is hanging out way off-screen and there's only three glowy statues here instead.

...And yet, as the Fool continues on his journey he comes to a challenge that is too difficult for him to manage. He is overwhelmed and must surrender. As he feels defeated, he truly believes in that moment that he has sacrificed everything. And yet, despite this, when he stops trying to fight for control, he learns the support of his inner-self. The Fool feels that he has become The Hanged Man: suspended for a moment, free of all pressure.

I'll do everything in my power to help you. Just promise me that you'll be careful!

XII. Arcana Hanged Man (Portable)

Master of Shadow

It's out of your attack range...

Give me a minute... I'll see what I can find out.

So, despite Aigis having a gun for a hand and everyone firing literal magic from their mind, we can't hit the Hanged Man right now. Instead, we can only deal with these Statues.

They're all really boring and dull too. They all have 250HP, 28 in every stat and cast a single-target mid-tier spell. The left-most one does Agilao, the middle one does Bufula and the right-most one does Zionga. They also nullify their respective element (see: above).

If you somehow don't kill 'em all in one turn, then the Hanged Man still gets turns which he just uses right now to mainly summon extra adds.

In this case, he summons a.. Maya shadow. He can also recreate any missing statues if he really wants.

If this happens, then something's probably gone wrong somewhere (like say the AI not wholly cooperating for some arbitrary reason) and Fuuka decides to hint that maybe you should destroy the statues.

After they're all broken, the Hanged Man falls from the sky hitting the bridge, taking no fall damage but he is Knocked Down.

Provided he's alone/any other Maya adds are also down, this is enough for an All Out Attack to be triggered. He can still take turns and stuff when he's on the ground, but there he's more like on all fours rather than splayed out like this. There's even a mini-animation for him getting up to that position. It's... a really good idea to take this though; makes the fight quicker.

Stat-wise, the Hanged Man is a little bit dull. Of course he is. He's an Arcana boss. He has 5400 HP, which gives him more than the Reaper even, and 33 in every stat. Boooooring.

When he's on the ground, the Hanged Man can and does actually bother to attack some. Akasha Arts is simultaneously his most and least dangerous attack.

It hits everyone 1-2 times for quite a bit of Strike elemental damage. It has a base power of 350, but has 85% accuracy and a 10% crit rate.

His only other attack is God's Hand, which is hands down (...no pun intended) the straight up strongest Strike skill.

A giant golden fist descends from the sky and smashes into the target. It has a base power of 600, and has a 90% accuracy and 10% crit rate. It's absurdly good, yes.

As the represenative of the reversed Hanged Man, the Arcana Hanged Man an be seen as overly egotistical and selfish. By spending most of the fight in the air, it shows a refusal to help others as well as overall indecision.

Its selfish nature can be seen with how it leaves everything to a bunch of rigid statues and the Mayas that it summons.

Unfortunately for the Arcana Hanged Man, summoning more of these statues is probably the worst option for it. It lets us deal ~1000 damage for free on an All Out Attack after all!

Doesn't take much punishment to actually drop him, and bring this fight to a close. It's an interesting attempt to vary up the fight a bit, but it just makes it take a bit longer than it would otherwise.

The Voice Someone Calls