Part 152: 11/13: 6500 Miles To Graceland
Part 143: 11/13: 6500 Miles To GracelandMusic: The Whims of Fate
I’m glad this song is good, because outside of the occasional switch to Last Surprise for a battle, it’s all I hear for most of this Palace!
It should be quite clear. We must play in the casino and win. Customers are divided into the different floors based on the rank of their play. If we wish to enter a higher floor, we will need to increase our rank. 
So that means we gotta win and gain the right to head up. And as I mentioned earlier, a different kinda member’s card is used depending on your rank. We’ll have to obtain a card for the high limit floor somewhere around here. 
For real!? Ugh, what a pain! Why don’t we begin by walking around this floor? That should be a good method of gaining intel. 
This room is fairly empty outside of some treasure spots, the cashier’s desk up ahead...
...and a safe room, natch.
So all of this is going according to her plan… I cannot help but feel we’re being manipulated here. 
First, we will be providing you with a welcome gift. Please accept these coins.
We receive 1000 coins and a handy/gaudy counter to keep track of them that will stay onscreen all the time outside of cutscenes and battles so we don’t ever forget whose rules we’re playing by!
He’s just giving them to us!? Perhaps this is a show of confidence. It seems she truly has no intention of losing. Now then, to the left of the counter is the dice game area, while to the right are the slots. Please head to whichever strikes your fancy. 
Furthermore… this is a map of the members floor. Please accept it. 
That means we should probably start with the dice game… right? Ah, one more thing. Casino coins can be exchanged for prizes at this very counter. Please feel free to ask us about this service. 
Prizes? What do you think we can get from there…? Our most desired prize is a member’s card for entry into the high limit floor. However, the price of exchange for this item is 50,000 coins. 
I see… I believe I have figured out Sae-san’s intent behind this. 
That’s absurd! 50,000 coins!? *chuckle* We also allow players to borrow coins if need be, up to the current total on their card. I don’t wanna do that! Owin’ cash to a weird-ass casino inside someone’s head is way too scary! Oh well… Standing around here won’t get us anywhere. So, should we head to this dice game? Actually, do you mind if I speak to you all beforehand? There is something on my mind. 
It would not surprise me in the least if they were rigged somehow. You think she’s cheatin’!? Remember, this is a courthouse in the real world. Sae-san is quite particular about “winning” here. To compound that, defendants in Japan are prosecuted at a rate of 99.9%. Victory is nigh unattainable. What!? How can a percentage like that really be possible? Are all those verdicts the correct ones?What do you think, Ann?
Not exactly… The investigators are human too, after all. Then… You are not the first to poijnt out the rigged nature of this system. The prosecution is near unbeatable. That’s why cases of false accusation cause such a stir: They are exceedingly rare.I think this is supposed to say “cases of exoneration” or something similar. “Cases of false accusation” implies that people being falsely accused is rare, rather than people being found innocent. Also, that still sounds awkward, but hell, it ain’t my job to fix this.
But it’s total bullshit gettin’ arrested even when you’re not guilty! Indeed, and if we do not hurry, the Phantom Thieves will fall victim to a similar fate. 
...We’re going to win this, no matter what. 
Now that we’ve regained control, let’s head for the dice area. First though, we see this present. The presents are a little different from ordinary treasure spots.
Grabbing one will give us 100, 150, or 200 coins on the spot. It’s nifty but ultimately totally unnecessary unless you completely fuck up somehow.
Y-Yeah, I guess… That’s not really how a normal high schooler would describe it though…Yusuke’s a good boy, Ann. Don’t try to change him.
In any case, we should proceed further in. 
First, let’s head into one of the dice rooms.
Please enjoy this simple game in which you guess the total number that will appear on three cast dice. A correct prediction will double your bet, while three matching dice will triple it. Most importantly, matching sixes is a supreme victory! Regardless of what your initial bet was, the payout will be quintuple that! Buy-in for this game is only 25 casino coins. Would you like to play? 
Would I!
Damn!
Would you like to continue playing?
>ContinueLet’s go again!
Dammit!
Three attempts later...
What is it, Akechi? I feel a hot streak coming up!
Wait, you mean cheating…? Even if we continue playing here, there is no chance of victory. We should retreat for the time being. But we won’t be able to earn coins if we don’t play. Yes, that is exactly why we will stop them from rigging the game. Considering the scale of this operation, I doubt they are cheating via analog methods. I expect there is a control room of sorts that determines the win percentages for the entire area.
So that’s where we’ll strike. All right, let’s go look for anywhere that seems suspicious! 
After reloading to keep my coin count pristine because I’m incredibly dumb like that, we find this vent on the north wall.
Super convenient, don’tcha think? Anyway, based on what Crow was saying, the games in here are all totally rigged. Oooh, so we’re gonna catch ‘em in the act! I guess that’s easy… C’mon, let’s get to it! 
This Ganesha has the same attacks its boss form did last update, but it’s weak to Psy this time around.
Queen Mab here is also near-identical to its boss form from the last update, including its Wind weakness.
Climate Decorum is a skill for Haru that doubles her evasion against all skills during Pollen, Rain, or Flu. It’s decent enough but we’re probably not going to get a chance to use it with Akechi subbed in for her. We slot it in for Fast Heal anyway.
And another safe room.
A fifth!?
(We’re not a fifth. The game doesn’t recognize that we’ve progressed since reaching the beginning of this floor, and even still that’s a really low estimate that makes me suspect they cut something)
Further in, Ryuji learns Elec Boost to replace Deathbound. His Electric attacks are now 25% stronger.
Subrecover SP restores 1% of the backup party’s SP after battle. This is clearly not enough to really rely on even just as an incentive to switch between party members, but it does mean we can now Auto-Recover with impunity because Morgana and Ann will recover most of what they lose if we don’t take a lot of hits.
Akechi also learns Attack Master to replace Kouga. Attack Master gives him Tarukaja at the start of battle, and it’s pretty useful. Weird that he gets it instead of Ryuji, though.
We also run into this Treasure Demon, Orlov. At this point I’m saving most of my bullets for Oda’s Down Shot to use on Treasure Demons or pesky enemies without weaknesses.
And we make it to the control room.
So this is the cheating control room… What should we do, Joker? 
Very well. Let us dispatch it swiftly. 
Bullet Hail on a miniboss always feels nice.
This dude is weak to Bless and goes down right quick.
Morgana learns Diarahan, which fully heals one ally, to replace Diarama.
Ann learns Burn Boost to replace Dormina. We haven’t used Dormina since Kamoshida’s Palace, and while it was handy there we don’t really need it now.
Yusuke learns Masukukaja to replace Sukukaja. Sukukaja is kind of lame. Masukukaja is fucking awesome and well worth a skill slot.
Makoto finally learns Freidyne to replace Freila.
C’mon, we should stop the rigging. Hold on a moment, I have an idea I’d like to discuss. 
Oh god, where did the rest of you come from!?
I’ve devised an easier way of doing this… A way to get all the coins we need. All of them in here? Is that even possible…? It is now. I’ve deduced how to win the games. 
And everyone’s gone again.
You can do that!? Wait, this is a job for me! It’ll be a breeze! Cheating seems somehow wrong though… The odds here are stacked against us. We would never win if we stuck to normal methods. We do not have any time to waste either. It would be best for us to focus on our objective. ...You’re right. Changing my sister[‘s heart is the ultimate goal here. I feel bad asking this, but may we borrow your expertise yet another time, Oracle? I’m game! But man, you sure give a lot of orders for a noob! 
The other rooms should at least be back to normal honest gambling now too. Anyway, I marked our special room on the map. Make sure you use that one! Perfect. Now, let us head into the fray. 
Let’s head over to the marked room, then.
Both buy-in and payout are five times the normal amount! A single customer is limited to four plays! 
The buy-in is 125 coins! Would you like to play the game? 
(It doesn’t matter what you pick)
Would you like to continue playing? Of course. Excellent, sir. Please predict the next sum. We roll again...
Would you like to continue playing? You bet we do! In that case, please predict the next sum! 
We can play one more time, right? We’re gonna keep it rolling! U-Understood, ma’am… P-Please predict the next sum… 
Hot damn! We got a shitton of coins in like, no time! We’ve retrieved the device. Our next move is up to you, Joker. Wait, what device? What the hell are you talking about?
I thought we were done winnin’ here. Wanna go somewhere else? 
Have we reached our goal? It still may not be enough. Are you seriously planning on taking every last coin in here? Ahaha, it was a joke. However, it would be nice to have a little more coinage on hand, would it not? Everyone wait here. Skull, I would like you to come with me. Why me? Because I am the “brains” here, am I not? Huh? Oh, sure. ...Time to see what he’s made of. 
That was amazing! It was like magic! I could totally get addicted to this! Where are Crow and Skull? 
Whoa… So… heavy… 
They just give you another 3000 coins because we need a certain amount for the next section. I guess Akechi rigged a different table? With the “device?”
We still have a long way before we reach our goal though. Now then, on to the slot machines. 
What he said.
Here you will be playing a game that requires you to match the patterns on the rotating wheels. We’re here to win coins, not to play your game. I am well aware of that. Though to be perfectly honest… I’ve been granted permission to kill every last one of you here. 
These guys are weak to Nuke, and their only skill is Wage War, which inflicts Rage on the entire party. They’re chumps, though Akechi isn’t that useful since they Null Bless and Reflect Curse. I do learn in the process though that if an enemy reflects your own weakness back at you, you don’t get knocked down.
Wait, why didn’t the guests around us react to that battle? It is probably due to Sae-san’s perception of the other people in the courtroom. Perhaps as she sees it, they only care for their own victory, while ignoring the needs of others. That reaction is certainly different from what we saw on the lower floor. I wonder if that trend grows stronger the higher up you go in the court system. It is possible. In any case, we can now freely access the Slot Room. We should go look around. ...Although I doubt we will find a fair fight waiting for us in this scamming casino. 
I would expect they’re all rigged to prevent us from ever winning. Then should we deal with that first? No, I believe it would be prudent to examine this slot area further. Casinos hold their higher-limit slots somewhere in the back. If we were going to circumvent their trick, would it not be more efficient to do so on those? That’s assuming we’ll even be able to solve the problem. I trust in your ability to handle such a matter. A-Aight, let’s go look for that sweet, sweet slot machine!
Near the entrance, we come across this terminal.
Can you mess with it and figure out how they’re cheating, Oracle? Wellll… this one’s on standby. Uh, basically I’m gonna have to activate it remotely from a main terminal somewhere else. So this one is useless unless we can access the main hub. Oh well. We should at least commit this place to memory for now. 
Off in the distance there we can see a tasteful bunny girl. Like in Madarame’s Palace, the female-variant Shadows don’t give chase, but instead summon additional Shadows upon spotting you.
The lady in the middle should be familiar—she’s a Kushinada, and we’ve already summoned one of her. She uses Matarukaja to boost her party’s attack and Mabufula to deal Ice damage.
These guys are Kumbhandas, and while they’re still only able to cast Wage War, their resistances are a little different—instead of Null Bless, Repel Curse, and a Nuke weakness, they’re weak to Ice and merely resist Curse (though they also Null Fire).
Let him feel like he’s on a winning streak, then make him lose big on the final round. Tch, they’re tellin’ the dealers how to rig the games… We anticipated as much. 
Earlier I said I’d show off the animation for Eigaon, and while I might gif it later, here’s the meat of it. It’s dope.
This must be the main hall of the slot room. Eventually, we make it into the main hall.
Let’s do that, then.
Wait, all cherries wins you 5,000 coins, BAR gets you 10,000, while a 777 gives you 50,000!? Whoa! That’ll get us all the coins we need in one fell swoop! Assuming we can win, that is. If the reward’s high, the risk will surely be high as well. Either way, our goal here is to gain a member’s card for the high limit floor. It would make the most sense for us to utilize this slot machine in some way, shape, or form. However… Lemme guess, “We will need to stop their cheating first”? There’s no doubt this one’s rigged too. Haha, I’m glad you understand. Now then, let us search the area. Hopefully we will find something that can give us a little more information about this slot. There’s prolly a terminal for info back behind the thing. Try looking there, Joker. 
Sure enough, it’s here.
Mweheheh… Let’s see… ...Wow, they’re going really hard on this whole cheating angle. We wouldn’t have won a penny here. Do you think you’ll be able to disable their rigging of it? Not from this terminal. It looks like there are multiple different-colored control panels throughout this area. Out of those, I’ll need the red and green ones. I should be able to control things from there. Do you know where we can find them though? Uh, you know this is me we’re talking about, right? I can predict where they might be. One’s most likely near the entrance to this area. The comm link ran all the way out there. The other should be back in the staff passageway… somewhere. That’s all I can figure out. Hm, so the entrance to the slot room… and some location tucked away in the staff passageway… I guess we’ll just have to go looking for them! Let’s hurry up and get this done fast! So, the wording here is a little confusing. When Futaba said “the entrance to this area,” I on my first run thought that meant “this room,” and didn’t know why the panel wasn’t here. It’s simple enough to check, though. That first panel we found is one of the ones we’re looking for here, so let’s go.
That means we just need to find the green panel now. Let’s go! As for the green panel… my first run, I got stuck on this for maybe half an hour. See, I just couldn’t find it, backtracking everywhere. I even went back to the backroom of the dice area, thinking that maybe they were trying to trick me. Well, they were. Just not like that.
Hidden behind these crates to the left...
Why, it’s a treasure chest and the panel! The issue wasn’t that I didn’t know about this area, by the way. It’s marked on the map, after all. The issue is that the panel is infuriatingly hidden on a wall you have no reason to look at unless you’re coming from an absurd angle.
Whatever, here it is.
Gotcha! We’ll be done after this. ...Hold on. 
Oracle, would it be possible to also tamper with the average win percentages for the slot machines? So you want to take advantage of the system, just like we did for the dice game. Essentially. My aim here is the giant slot machine. You mean the one that’s 5,000 coins a play!? I don’t know if that’s really possible…! Oooh, sounds like fun to me. Just gimme a sec. 
The giant one’s still only on an 8:2 ratio though. There’s honestly no guarantee it’ll work properly. Yep, that’s just about on the same level of fucked as everything else in our lives.
Does that mean it will miss two times out of ten? That’s somewhat concerning… It should be fine. Nothing the Phantom Thieves do can ever be truly considered risk-free, after all. If we want to succeed, we simply have no other choice but this. …… That seems like a sound argument to me. Very well, let’s leave this to Joker then. 
I-I wonder if we’ll actually manage to score that 50,000… She’s right. There’s a 20% chance the rig won’t work, and even if we win, it might not be enough. This is a big gamble, Joker. Are you sure about this?
Eh, fuck it.
One reel stops.
And the second.
We did it!
50,000 coins, hm? ...You truly are special, Joker. 
You ever watch this video where two Australian dudes win the double jackpot at this Japanese arcade not-pachinko game and it’s just nonstop coins raining down for like, multiple minutes? That’s what this reminds me of.
Hey, doesn’t that sound like a jackpot to you? What!? Who got it? It is no surprise the customers are reacting to this commotion. We should leave for now. But what about the coins!? Those are just for show. The actual coin total has already been added to our card.Then why was Ryuji pushing around that fucking cart full of coins earlier!?
Akechi’s got the gambling madness in his eyes.
You wish to win more coins? I’m pretty sure we have enough. More is always better than less. Then again, I suppose we are already good to go. That’s right… We have 50,000 coins now! Let’s go exchange them for a member’s card to the high limit floor! Good idea.
We head back to the counter.
While we’re here, we have enough to buy yet another Soma (full HP and SP restore to all allies) as well as a Bead Chain (full HP restore to all allies). They’re both well worth it.
We also pick up the High Limit Card. Eh.
I hope I was able to contribute in some meaningful way. Come, let us head over to the elevator. 
Uh-oh, Shadow!
They’re greeting us in front of the elevator? This doesn’t give off a welcoming vibe though… This must be due to the instigation of Sae-san. We should be prepared to fight. 
Music: Blood of Villain
We merely followed your rules. 
Hmph! I am the manager of this casino, and the rules deem that I am the victor! It appears both the Sae-san of the real world and that of this world are at their wit’s end… ...I think our guests will be leaving now. The Shadow approaches.
You’re the only one who’s gonna be leaving, black suit! Things would’ve been so much simpler if we could do this from the start! 
This enemy Drains Wind, uses Ziodyne and Garudyne, and can use Diarahan to heal itself to full. If only it had enough health to survive a full round, especially after Akechi gets a lucky crit on it...
Music: Desire
Criminal trials are but a gamble to be won, and us prosecutors arrange the gambling table. Hence, losses are unacceptable! We must win, even if it has to be on false charges! Are you serious, Sis!?*pause*
Mako-chan… Don’t think such a petty trick could defeat me. I may have to acknowledge your skills—if you can make it up to the manager’s floor, that is. 
I wish I didn’t have to hear that from Sae-san herself… Sis is completely distorted! We have to stop her, quickly! 
We all feel the same way. There’s no time to waste. She mentioned something about a manager’s floor, right? Let’s try heading up there. We’ll change Niijima-san’s heart for sure. Music: The Whims of Fate
You can now access the following floors: The Standard Floor./The Members Floor./The High Limit Floor.
But she’s so close I can almost smell her now. The next floor’s prolly gonna be the last one. Welp, let’s get on up to the high limit floor!
And we ascend once more.
All right, during tonight’s Phashion Phrenzy, we’re taking a look back through Persona history! We’ll be looking through costumes from every main game in the series, as well as some related titles. It’s also worth pointing out that whenever Maaku wears an outfit from a different game, the battle music changes from Last Surprise to a track from the respective game! I’ll be including those songs as well here. The victory themes change too, but those are more incidental (read: I’m too lazy).
Music: A Lone Prayer
This track is the main battle theme from the PSP remake of the first Persona game. Don’t play that game, it’s not very good.
God we look like such fucking nerds noooooooo! What’s with the outrageously huge tie for the girls!? Morgana is dressed up as Trish, a fairy from Persona 1 who charged you to heal.
Music: Battle (Persona 2)
This track is the main battle theme from the Persona 2: Innocent Sin remake for PSP. That game is better than Persona 1 but still utterly impenetrable and totally irrelevant to modern Persona.
Much better already. Kinda flat, but still stylish. Morgana is dressed up as Trish once again, while Akechi is dressed up as a student from Kasugayama High School, probably Jun.
Music: Mass Destruction
This track is the main battle theme for the vanilla, FES, and male route of P3P versions of Persona 3. This is a great song but I would have killed for them to have included Wiping All Out.
I like this outfit on these characters more than I liked it in actual Persona 3. The Evokers are also a nice touch. Morgana is dressed up as Aigis, the real main character of that game.
Music: Time To Make History
This track is the normal battle theme of Persona 4 Golden. I’m glad it’s this one because I’m so fucking sick of Reach Out To The Truth, you have no idea.
Nice glasses, everyone. Morgana is dressed up as Teddie, naturally. Also the way Akechi wears his uniform is a clear callback to Naoto, hah.
Music: Old Enemy – Akira Volume
This track was remixed for SMT III: Nocturne and most people probably know it from there.
I like the uniform, but I know absolutely nothing about Shin Megami Tensei if..., and it wasn’t localized. Great pull, Atlus. Morgana appears to be… Raidou Kuzunoha? This game was an inspiration for the high school setting of the Persona series, and other elements like the Arm PCs seem to have inspired other games like SMTIV.
Music: Stage
This track plays in the third stage of Babel, Obelisk. I never got past the first stage, rip.
Catherine’s a really good game with really great style except all the transphobia. Maaku is Vincent, Ryuji is Orlando, Morgana is a random sheep I guess, Ann is Catherine, Haru is Erica, Futaba is Toby for some reason, Akechi is Boss (the first Atlus “Boss”