Persona 2: Eternal Punishment Part #7 - Part Seven: Shopping in Aoba

Part 7: Part Seven: Shopping in Aoba

Part Seven: Shopping in Aoba

Last time on Persona 2:

Maya and friends met Baofu, a wiretapping criminal with information about the Joker. He told them that the man who first contacted the Joker was Tatsuzou Sudou, the current foreign minister of Japan, and that he knew where Sudou's son lived. Baofu joined up with the party to make the trip there. While Maya could have used the emblem of Seven Sisters High School she recieved from a mysterious boy to stave the Joker off, she decided she'd rather get to the heart of the matter, and burned it instead.

Katsuya: I see...Miss Amano, let's check it out.
A sanitarium, eh? Lovely.

Baofu: Considering the situation you're in right now, you'll need all the help you can get. Let's go in and have a look...
Katsuya: What is that? What does that have to do with anything?
Baofu: I don't even feel like explaining...just follow me...
Guess what? We've got a new party member! You know what that means: it's stats time.

Baofu's Persona is Odysseus, who's immune to Wind and Lightning attacks but weak to Earth. Odysseus primarily uses Wind attacks, along with various flavors of sword technique. Baofu himself attacks by flipping coins at the enemy; his stats are fairly balanced now, but he typically ends up fairly slow and fairly strong.
With that out of the way, it's time to visit that Velvet Room.

Maya could tell something was strange the moment she stepped in.

Expect to be seeing this motley crew often - the Velvet Room is probably the most important service in the game, as it's where you summon and activate new Personas and delete your older ones.

Personas are listed by Arcanum - the various suits of the Tarot. Each character is more or less compatible with certain Arcana - Maya is best with the Moon, Ulala with the Star, Katsuya with Justice, and Baofu with the Hanged Man. Having a better compatibility with an Arcana will make Personas of that Arcanum cost fewer SP per summoning, as well as enabling them to rank up faster; having a poor compatibility will make them cost more, rank up more slowly, and in some cases a character can't use a certain Arcanum at all. (Incidentally, remember Yuki? She was best with Personas from the Priestess Arcana.)

There's one other rule - you can only use Personas that are up to five levels above the level of your most powerful character. Right now, this is Baofu, who's at level eight; this means that we can use Personas up to level thirteen. The list of Personas available now is horribly incomplete, but still terribly long; as you level, the list will grow, and you can also use Material Cards to summon special Personas that tend to be a bit more powerful than the norm.

Each Persona costs a certain number of Tarot cards of its Arcanum to summon - in the example picture, Tengu costs 64 Magician cards, and we don't have any; that's okay, because we can't use him yet anyway. There's a catch to this, though, as demons have Arcana as well, and they only yield cards of their Arcanum when you manage to evoke interest from them. Why is this a catch, you ask? Because certain Arcanum have no contactable demons associated with them - the Emperor arcanum, for instance.

To get around this, you need to forge a Contract with a demon before evoking interest from it. When you do this, you'll recieve both cards of the demon's Arcanum and blank cards that the Demon Artist can repaint into the Arcanum of your choice. Got all that? Good.

Each Persona is unique - I'll go over them individually as we summon and use them. After we leave the Velvet Room, we head back to 2X Slash, the cyber café where we first met Baofu.

There, we meet yet another young woman who's obsessed with Wang Long.

She offers to tell our fortune, and asks for our birth month.

We'll use mine.
Hmm...the Guardian Dragon for September is the Black Dragon, which grants wisdom. You are earnest and enthusiastic. Your fortune for today is...Lively dragon's breath will calm the sky. But, beware of the Blue Dragon...stating your likes and dislikes is good! ...How's that?
I feel enlightened by this. Very enlightened. Terribly enlightened, as if by some force from beyond the stars. So enlightened that I have the urge to get another fortune, but this time, I've got something to say other than my birth month...

I'll leave the outcome of this particular exchange up to your imagination for the moment. It's one of those you'll see things. After scaring the living shit out of the fortuneteller woman, we move on to chat with everyone in 2X Slash.

Nothing too fascinating. Time to see what they've got to eat.

Hey man, don't judge me.

Food gives you a stat boost that lasts for a variable amount of time - typically it'll wear off after half a dungeon or so. It's pretty cheap, so it's worth eating before you head off; the catch is that you won't know what each meal does until you try it, and you have to wait for one meal to wear off before you can have another.

You'd be amazed, buddy.

He continues to say: Well, it was the topic of our conversation, but it was dull...I mean, so boring that I would rather die. Aren't I an optimist? As Maya turns to leave, he adds I'm bored all the time, so come again. I'll even treat you for a meal. Just joking...don't take it seriously.
Next up is Parabellum.

Parabellum is a weapon shop, and a bar. It's some kind of crazy weapon bar. We saw the reason for that in the last update.

Weapons...(which are mostly useless, as spells are the way to go in the majority of situations)

...and drinks, which act like food.

The weight...the functional beauty...splendid! ...Huh, "gun control"? ...Please don't be a wet blanket.

Saotomi Tadashi is next; it's a convenience store, and there's a branch in every district in the city. Each store plays a remix of one fucking addictive theme song.