Persona 3 FES Part #69 - 10/04/09: In the Shadow of a Fortunate Moon

Part 69: 10/04/09: In the Shadow of a Fortunate Moon

So, it's that time of the month again. Early October brings with it our next full moon...

We'll just be hanging around for the day. Like always.

At least until the Dark Hour comes along...

The Voice Someone Calls

It's in the plaza in front of Iwatodai Station!

This will be the 10th...

Only a few left, but let's worry about them one at a time.

...Assuming they come one at a time. *giggle* Just kidding.

Are you serious!? Me and my big mouth...

...Where's Shinji?

I didn't ask any questions.

...Figures. He's always played by his own rules.

It's okay. At least he's coming, right?

Yeah. Not like someone I know who missed last time.

Hello? I was tied up, remember!?

Sheesh, give a guy a break.

Don't worry, Junpei. You'll get a bit of a break alright...

Hey Junpei, go get him. That'll be your punishment for last time.

Punishment...? What is this, kindergarten?

*sigh* That little shit is more trouble than he's worth.

It's a small thing, but I do like how when Junpei leaves, Koromaru turns to watch him.

All right, let's move out. This time, there are two enemies.

We'll determine our formation once we arrive.

This is the way we go to school! We've gotta protect this place...

It seems like they've been waiting for us.

...Where's Amada?

...Seems like something that would've been nice to mention before we got here. Just sayin'.

Dammit, Shinji... Where are you?

Um, I think we should hurry... They look like they're about to make their move.

Alright, let's decide on a team and engage the enemy!

M'kay, so this is who we're going with this time around.

Junpei's being fielded as penance for being a dumbass last month; Mitsuru's hopefully gonna be efficient with those Amped Bufulas, though that might not be the best thing right now; Koromaru's Koromaru. Ain't no one got any complaints with that.

Makoto's using an Agni Bracer (Fire Amp), Junpei's got the Berserker's Seal which should be very useful here, Mitsuru's still got that Varna Bracer and Koromaru's got a Giga Magic Band (+3 Magic) since that helps him not be super far behind.

In the Shadow of a Fortunate Moon

That Which Comes From The Darkness

After searching, the Fool begins to see the connections between things. He begins to see the intricate patterns and cycles throughout the world. He finds the Wheel of Fortune, which makes parts of the world work together.

X. Arcana Fortune; XI. Arcana Strength (Portable)

Master of Shadow

From these patterns and connections, the Fool sees the causes of suffering and disillusion. He is hard-pressed to find the courage and resolve to keep going despite setbacks. He must use his Strength to protect others.

You can't attack it right now... Concentrate on the one whose Arcana is Strength!

Arcana Strength, you say? As the Reversed Strength arcana, the Shadow is representative of the focussed protection of a single individual rather than assisting others in general. By making the Arcana Fortune completely invincible in this stage of the fight, this is made incredibly, bluntly, apparent.

So, because its Strength, let's just pop this Attack Mirror that I have too many of. For, well, obvious reasons.

The Arcana Strength is an... incredibly boring Shadow, honestly. It has 29 Strength, 29 Magic (which is actively irrelevant), 29 Agility, 29 Endurance and 29 Luck. It's an SMTIV demon through and through.

She's needlessly tanky, though, since she has 4000HP. This fight is long, but it sure isn't hard. There's MANY ways I could make this quicker, sure, but I'd rather do it "fairly" at least once. So, no Mind Change, no taking advantage of this fight's crippling weakness (...except in Portable)...

Doesn't even have any elemental resistances or strengths. You'd think at least some kind of Phys reduction, but nope. Doesn't even have a Counter skill!

She does have some potent Phys attacks anyway, mind you. Tempest Slash is 1-2 hits on a single target, with a base power of 350 and a 10% crit ate. It's the 4th strongest Slash skill.

...So, whoops, it just means that Strength hits herself for ~200 damage a pop in this case.

Gigantic Fist is a bit of an old classic at this point. Tetrakarn/Attack Mirrors are nice here in that they stick around on someone until it gets triggered, so good job hitting yourself again, Strength.

Heat Wave is Strength's only multi-target attack. It's just straight up one hit on everyone, for pretty decent Strike damage. It has a base power of 280 and a 10% crit rate.

Sometimes, and I do mean sometimes, Strength likes to pull out an Eerie Sound or Sexy Dance. That's all she can do for non-Phys stuff, and Eerie Sound is more beneficial for her since it's MT Distress and all.

Speaking of Crits, Strength CAN be critted (hurray!) but it doesn't help. Like Chariot/Justice's United form, she's immune to Knock Down.

While all this is happening, the Arcana Fortune is just sat off to the side being a big ol' gimmick.

As the Reversed Fortune arcana, the Arcana Fortune is focused on getting things done quickly and damning the consequences. It's incredibly straight forward and its gimmick is hella simple:

It summons a roulette wheel. There's a few different types that can be dropped in, and they're all both a hindrance and a help. There's 4 possible results, with two outcomes each. This one is Mataru/Maraku stuff; if it lands on Blue it helps you. If it lands on red, it helps the Shadows.

...There's no luck involved in this, by the way. You can get the result you want basically everytime, guaranteed.

Red is bad luck... I hope it doesn't come up.

The second type of wheel is incredibly simple. Three of these are direct damage, two of these are healing.

It's really not a lot of damage either way, so I just don't care about this one. We can heal this easily. For what its worth, the damage is 50/100/200 and the healing is always 100.

Having Mediarama is Titania's sole contribution here in the interest of fairness.

...So, the third wheel is fight breakingly good. It can inflict Distress, Panic, Fear or Rage. One of these is "you win", one of these is "you win a little bit slower," one of these is okay and Distress sure is here.

Because I'm being kind right now, I'll just get Panic everytime until Strength dies.

Which, at this point, doesn't take long at all.

And that means we're on stage 2 of the fight!

In this part of the fight, Fortune does do some other stuff which we'll get to in a bit.

It opted to use the ailment wheel first though. To highlight how much of a non-threat this fight is, I threw it on Enraged. We've briefly used this once before: the enemy gets to attack twice and deals more damage...

But in return, it, uh, takes more damage. This is without any (de)buffs or Mind Charge. I'm still holding back here, Fortune.

Which, uh, I have to. Fortune ALSO has 29 in every stat and no resistances/weaknesses. The only meaningful difference stat-wise between it and Strength is that Fortune has 3000HP.

Y'know, I wasn't expecting this but I sure can't complain.

...So, let's pretend I'm more merciful for a second here. Let's let Fortune get turns.

It takes it a fucking age and a half to do anything other than Wheel of Fortune, mind. I spent about 20 minutes fighting it before giving up and it used Garudyne twice in that time.

Which, uh, isn't really all that impressive all things considered. This only just barely dropped Junpei... on a weakness... when he had low HP from just mashing through Wheels.

Fortune also used Torrent Shot once. And that's it. It CAN use Magarudyne, and I think something else, but they don't happen often so whatever.

During that time, Fortune's health slowly just got whittled down from low-effort attacks every now and then. As it loses HP, the wheel implicitly gets more and more rigged in its favour.

...Notably, though, this actually doesn't matter and you can still guarantee whatever result you want.

Now let's pretend we just want to win.

So, I said I can guarantee whatever result I want. And I can. And you can. It's really simple. Look at the wheel here; it's broken into sections, right? Opt to stop the wheel at the opposite side of wherever you want it to land. So, Panic-Red gets Fear-Blue; Distress-Red gets Panic-Blue etc. etc. There is a bit of a timing trick to this, still, wherein if you hit it too early it won't work. So, it's best to aim for the halfway mark of the red section.

This STILL works when the quadrants get messed with in the second half of the fight. You just can't see the spots plainly delineated but (I think) it's easy to draw the lines mentally.

So, Fear is the best result across all wheels by far. It is "you win the fight" levels of good. The wheel notably ignores any resistances and inflicts the ailment. It cannot fail, provided there isn't outright immunity and also another ailment in the way.

Let's meet Ghastly Wail. This is a special skill that we can get from Samael (the Death Arcana persona below Mot) when he gets to level 43. That's the earliest opportunity for you to have it.

A thing is inflicted with Fear? It dies, no save. This works on everything so long as Fear can land.

...This is also what the Sleeping Table tries to do you, by the way.

And as an added bonus, yeah, it works on Fortune too. Notably, Fortune only cheats and modifies sizes/available results for the direct damage/heal wheel. So, uh, good job there Fortune.

In the Shadow of Misfortune

even if you skipped over it before now, i ten billion percent recommend watching the video from this point onwards

The Voice Someone Calls

*sigh* Man, talk about exhausting.

This time, those two who call themselves Strega did not interfere.

It must be because we have Chidori.

Anyway, I'm glad everything went well.

......

The Chairman doesn't seem to be too concerned, so he went home.

Yamagishi, where are those two?

I'm sorry, I haven't been able to locate them yet.

Let's return to the dorm, and then go from there.

......

...Akihiko, are you listening?

Just go back without me. I'm gonna go look for them for a while.

...What's wrong?

Akihiko...?

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Silence

......

I'm surprised you abandoned the operation.

...Do you know why I asked you to meet me here?

Two years ago today... October 4th.

They called it an accident... but it wasn't.

I saw the whole thing...

Living With Determination

......

...Since then, it's been one bad thing after another...

And all I get from people is sympathy, no matter where I go.

What's the point in living...?

...That's why I decided that I had to find her killer--YOU!

You said once that you wanted to forget what happened on that day...

So, when I found out it was a full moon today, I knew I had to confront you.

...Today, Mom is watching over me.

......

...Back at the dorm...

The Voice Someone Calls

To be fair, we DID know that Ikutsuki wasn't gonna be here. Ken and Shinji, from their perspective, could be anyway so that's fair.

Anyway, why was Akihiko-san acting so weird?

What's so special about October 4th?

I was so caught up in the operation that I didn't realize it...

This is the day Amada's mother was killed!

You serious!?

Yamagishi, I need you to find the two of them immediately.

I-I understand.

Although her death was officially listed as an accident...

Notable that Mitsuru says "we" here, even though..

It was two years ago, when we were pursuing an unusual Shadow that had escaped into the city...

We were in a residential area, but the Shadow was all we were thinking about...

Unfortunately, there was a casualty:

Amada's mother.

No way... Are you shittin' me!?

Then, to Ken-kun, Senpai is...

Amada volunteered to join us. But, now that I think about it...

Maybe, I don't know, be more specific than "another Persona user"???

Akihiko?

No... it's...

why not just say that in the first place

hell why not say WHO IT IS

That's not good.

Ugh... It's an absolute nightmare!

Senpai!!

C'mon!!

Back in the alley...

Silence

I won't stop you.

You're right... I wanted to forget.

But, nothing I did could erase the memory...

And now, I find myself here--the last place I want to be.

......

It's my fault... This is what I deserve.

But... let me give you one warning.

Warning...?

Just remember that...

Is that supposed to change my mind...?

Even if all you have now is hatred, one day you'll regret it.

That Which Comes From The Darkness

That is the nature of revenge.

Is it not permissible to kill those who are themselves killers?

...You.

But, we cannot simply ignore your meddling.

Do not fear. This life is but a stepping stone.

Salvation shall be yours...

You cannot defy fate...

You shall die... whether or not it is at the hand of this boy.

......

You've been taking those pills for some time now...

What's he talking about!?

That's bullshit!

Listen to your body... You know it to be true.

What does he mean...?

You're going to die...?

...No matter what I do?

That's not fair!!

that's not your all out attack cue, ken!!

The cause of death is not of importance.

Besides, the breath of life is faint in you as well, child.

......

Since you are both destined to perish, allow me to do the honors...

A slight change in timing shouldn't matter too much.

Silence

Agh...!

N-No...

Now then... With what life you have left, answer me this...

There is one like Chidori among you, is there not?

Now tell me... Which one of you is it?

Ugh... ah...

*gasp*

......

...What's the matter?

Cat got your tongue?

Th-There's... no one...

Wait!

Is that true?

...Yes.

That's the only reason they let me join.

Ken... no...!

...Quiet. You had your chance.

It doesn't matter anymore... I'll never have my revenge.

...I have no reason to live...

How enviable...

Rest peacefully...

As soon as we enter the anime zone once again, we immmediately hear a gunshot ring out...

...though it didn't hit Ken...

Just Like This...

...since Shinji ran in to intercept it.

What is the meaning of this?

Why would you risk your life to save this child?

Shinji!

How very disappointing...

And just like that, Takaya runs off...

As the rest of the party convene around Shinji. It's fine, we have a lot of folks with (Me)Diarama and/or Recarm.

What's with the long face... Isn't this what you wanted? *cough*