Part 205: 1/10/10

1/10/10

We've got another holiday coming up tomorrow.



Yeah, it's Coming of Age Day.
Like I said before, I'm just hoping I can make it to my 20th birthday.

Normally the time off would be nice, but honestly I'd like to keep busy.



Narrator: Episode 46: The Great Devil's Tomato Farm! Owl doesn't like tomatoes!?
Newscaster: …And now, the news.
City officials are concerned that the graffiti and posters are destroying the town's image, and…

Of course some of us don't have that problem.



Yes, Akihiko and I will be taking it. I believe it's on the 16th and 17th.
It's only held during the day…
…so we'll have plenty of time to go to Tartarus.

Since we've got time tomorrow, I decided we'd go train a bit in Tartarus. And inevitably, my attention was drawn to the strange door Elizabeth had told me about at the first of the year.



> Is this the door that Elizabeth was talking about…?
> She mentioned a "sister"… You decide to open the door…

The other side of the door was strange. It was like a desert, and it felt… I don't know. Ominous.



> ……?
> Someone is standing there…

Sure enough, someone was waiting for us there.



I am one who rules over power… Will that description help you understand?
I've heard a lot about you. I thought it was time I saw you with my own eyes.
This is the Vision Quest Hall. It's a world inside of you that I have prepared.
A world within me…?
I have prepared various contests for you here, each one in accordance with your memories.
Do you remember the giant Shadows you've fought so far?
Here, you will be able to fight them again, just as you did the first time…
Just like then?
…I just told you. These were made from your memories.
I think you'll understand faster if you open the first door rather than stand here asking questions.
…Okay.
Think of it as my challenge to you.
You have the freedom to choose whether or not you answer the "questions" posed here.
Some are quite difficult… I won't think less of you for retreating.
Now, open the doors of your own will.
And after you find an answer to each question… But that would be telling.

As were some… bad memories.

Video- "Priestess"

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Boss Battle: Priestess
So, we're up against the Priestess again, this time upscaled to be a bit more appropriate to this point in the game. A few notes: we no longer have a time limit, and yes we are limited to the party we had when we first fought her. Her strategies are basically the same, she'll summon Shadows and cast some magic. She's got much stronger spells than she used to, but she's still pretty fragile so just beat her up with things that aren't Ice. Easy as can be.

Video- "Emperor and Empress"

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Boss Battle: Emperor and Empress
And here's the second one, the Emperor and Empress. They work the same way, in that she's vulnerable to physicals and he's vulnerable to magic at the start. This makes it easy to kick out some AoAs on them right off the bat. Empress still focuses on magic, she just has much higher tier spells. Emperor in turn still focuses on physical attacks, but he's got some really nasty ones and ideally you'll kill him before he gets too many turns. If you can't just blow them up these guys could be scary, but you should be able to blow them up.

Video- "Hierophant"

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Boss Battle: Hierophant
Hierophant is definitely relatively much harder than he used to be. He just spams Maziodyne for most of the fight, adding in his group fear Prophecy of Ruin as things go on. Since you've got to use Yukari, ideally you want Thor's Heart Item for her to negate her weakness to Lightning. There's not much to be said, have enough Me Patra gems to negate the Fears and keep everyone healed. You'll either kill him or not.

Video- "Lovers"

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Boss Battle: Lovers
Lovers meanwhile is easy. He probably has Maragidyne and still has all the other stuff he used to but he's also still pretty easy to mow down with physical attacks of any type so he'll not live anywhere near as long as Hierophant did with any luck.

After we'd beaten all the Shadow doors on the left, I decided to check out the others…

Video- "Power Battle"

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Boss Battle: Hall of Power
This is one of the puzzle battles in the Vision Quest. For these we're given a fixed party with a fixed set of Personas and a stock of items just for the fight. They're all about understanding the 'trick' of the fight. This one is a bit of a pain, really. There are three Guardians, and any given one of them won't do anything other than an initial Power Charge until it is attacked the first time. So, if one of these Guardians is damaged it will use its turn to change its resistances around. The party we get for this is Mitsuru, Yukari, and Shinjiro. The trick of this is that it has three possible sets of properties, and we can always know which one it is in by using Aelita's normal attack. We either damage it, in which case Mitsuru can also damage it with an regular attack and we're good, we are Nulled in which case Yukari needs to Attack it, or we are absorbed. In this case it's actually weak to Strike, so Shinjiro can absolutely brutalize it and we'll be able to Break it on Ice and Wind to stack on even more damage. If you never miss you'll also never be hit by this boss, and as long as you get the gimmick it's not that bad. Very time consuming though.

Video- "Magic Battle"

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Boss Battle: Hall of Magic
Easy as can be. You are given the party of Junpei, Yukari, and Mitsuru, but the trick is that you'll never need them to do anything. You have Raphael, who has Makarakarn and can naturally repel Light. The only sort of attack they are naturally vulnerable to is their own Light attacks, so just cast Makarakarn every turn and eventually they'll kill themselves. Easy.

We'll finish these off next time, we spent a while training and I was getting a bit tired.