Part 118: Yukiko

You know, I've never actually killed the Charming Price on either of my playthroughs. I just have Chie keep it dizzied and wail on Shadow Yukiko as quickly as possible. I guess I figured she'd just resummon it within a few turns. You learn something new everyday.

Anyway, she may not have officially joined the Investigation Team yet, but she's got a Persona now so I'm counting it. It's time for Part 3 of Tactics Chat!

Yukiko Amagi

Arcana: Priestess
Persona: Konohana Sakuya (Resists Fire, weak to Ice)

Initial Skills: Dia, Agi, Me Patra, Maragi
Skills Learned: Media (Lv. 16), Agilao (Lv. 21), Recarm (Lv. 26), Fire Break (Lv. 30), Diarama (Lv. 33), Maragion (Lv. 39), Mediarama (Lv. 43), Fire Boost (Lv. 45), Agidyne (Lv. 51), Diarahan (Lv. 55), Samarecarm (Lv. 59), Mediarahan (Lv. 65), Maragidyne (Lv. 68), Salvation (Lv. 74), Fire Amp (Lv. 76)

Stat Growth: Low Strength, high Magic, average Endurance, Agility, and Luck. 6th in HP, 1st in SP.

Suggested Endgame Skillset: Agidyne, Maragidyne, Fire Boost, Fire Amp, Diarahan, Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Salvation.

Combat Role: Yukiko has two roles in combat: healing and blasting the shit out of things with fire magic. However, she does those roles better than any other character you'll obtain. Unlike Chie and Yosuke, there are no caveats to make while describing her. She learns every applicable skill in both chains, and her development is consistent throughout the entire game. Her magic stat is by far the highest of any party member. In my NG+ save file, Yukiko at level 91 has a staggering 88 Magic, and I imagine with a little luck from the RNG she can hit the 99 stat cap in Magic, although even I don't have the patience to find out. She also has the highest SP pool of any team member by far, which is a huge advantage in Persona 4 because the length of your dungeon crawling is tied to your SP more than any other factor. In the first few dungeons after you get her, you'll find her SP bar still a third to half full when Yosuke and Chie are running on empty. Her massive Magic obviously means that she is by far your best party member for magic damage, and since many end-game bosses are tests of endurance due to massive HP pools, you'll find yourself under much less SP pressure with Yukiko along for the ride. She's also the only party member to learn Salvation, which fully heals the entire party along with removing all status effects.

Even her downsides are relatively minor. Her Strength is terrible, but you should basically never need to physically attack with her in the first place unless you're finishing off a weak enemy. She does have the lowest HP in the game, but the gap between her and the other two casters is not particularly wide and her Endurance is high enough that she doesn't have serious fragility problems. Fire is a little more commonly resisted than Wind, but on par with the other elements and shouldn't be a serious knock against her considering that you'll be spending most of her turns in boss fights healing anyway. Her biggest flaw is something I won't talk about right now because we haven't been introduced to that aspect of the game yet, but the other healer character has the same problem and unless you want Souji to do a whole lot of healing by himself you're going to have to deal with it on one of them.

Choosing Yukiko's endgame skills, as with Chie's, is relatively simple since she doesn't have as many roles to juggle as Yosuke. For her fire magic, you'll want to keep Agidyne, Maragidyne, Fire Boost, and Fire Amp. For healing, you'll want Diarahan for a single ally and Samarecarm for revives. The tricky part is the party-wide heal. Since Salvation does basically the same thing as Mediarahan but also removes status effects, the temptation is to overwrite Mediarahan with Salvation. However, Salvation also costs 10 SP more to use than Mediarahan, and you'll be needing a full-party heal without status effects much more often than you'll need both. Even with Yukiko's massive SP pool, using 10 extra SP to heal your allies per turn will start to add up during the long endgame boss fights. The other options for her to keep are Me Patra (which removes Rage, Confusion, and Fear from the entire party, but for a much cheaper 6 SP) and Fire Break. Instead, I actually suggest keeping both Salvation and Mediarahan. Me Patra covers less than half of the potential status effects you can get in Persona 4, and by the end of the game if you've got a status effect chances are the boss also did damage to you that turn as well. That's just how endgame SMT bosses roll. I've already said my piece about Break skills, and while Fire Break is slightly more useful for Yukiko than Wind Break is for Yosuke, since Fire is more commonly resisted and she doesn't have any worthwhile physicals, by level 74 the few cases where Fire Break is useful have mostly already passed. Therefore, I suggest you keep both Mediarahan and Salvation around, so you have more flexibility with her healing depending on the situation.

Yukiko is actually the party member that gameplay-wise most resembles a character from Persona 3. In fact, her skills are almost identical to Yukari's, only with Salvation and the Agi line rather than Garu. In other words, she has two clearly defined roles, and she learns every applicable skill and doesn't have the same midgame slowdown that plague Yosuke and especially Chie. The only way I think her skills could be improved upon at all for either role would be if she learned Mind Charge. Her stat growth is also perfectly suited for those roles (which is more than I can say for pretty much every other character), with the SP to support costly heal spells and sky-high Magic for dishing out some serious fire damage. Ultimately, I think Yukiko is the most well-rounded and consistently useful party member in the game. She isn't completely without flaw, but since I consider her to have the best pro vs. con equation of any party member I'm giving her an A by default.

As with Chie, I will have a detailed comparison between Yukiko and the second healer once that character joins the party.