Part 225: Addendum XIV: Childs Play
Addendum XIV: Childs PlayTime to finally defeat Caroline and Justine, for real.
These are the Personas Im bringing into this fight. Were starting with Cybele for Auto-Marakukaja at the start of the fight, and well switch immediately to Yoshitsune for Hassou Tobis going forward. These will end up being the only two Personas I use in this fight, and I will only switch back to Cybele to heal when Makoto becomes indisposed for one reason or another.
I presume you have grown stronger since your last attempt.
OK, lets do this!
Yeah!
As before, I will prepare an appropriate venue within Mementos. Come with me. Now then do not disappoint us!
Before we start, Im going to explain some elements of my overall strategy heading in, and where they may fall short.
- First, Ive given Makoto Skanda Socks for +10 Agility (and Haru Sonic Socks for +5), which will give her a whopping +20 Agility in total when we factor in her +10 boost to all stats from Judge of the Dead. Despite how it may sound, this wont end up helping us that much, because Makoto is going to be pretty much a dedicated healbot on nearly every single turn of this fight, and also because the Twins have an absurd ninety-nine in all stats. Theyre going to hit us a ton, and theyre going to dodge us a ton.
- There are ways to mitigate this. We could bring Akechi, as he learns Debilitate at level 70 to lower all three of their battle parameters. We could even bring Yusuke, even if hes a bit redundant with Ryuji, to keep up Masukukaja. In fact, everyone has something to contribute. Morgana has Masukunda and Ann has Concentrate, Matarunda, and Blazing Hell. Were still gonna stick with the good ol dependable party of Ryuji, Makoto, Haru. This may end up being a mistake.
- I should probably have brought a good Persona with Masukukaja. The only one I had with it was Seth, who was a rather low level and weak to Bless. This meant our only source of Agility boosts was Futaba random boosts and Harus Heat Riser, which is single-target. So again, were going to miss a ton.
- My Haru build is a bit
unconventional, trading Psiodyne and Psy Amp for Tetrakarn and Makarakarn to reflect Physical and Magic attacks respectively. This might have been a mistake. I thought I would use them to reflect weaknesses, but the fact that the twins attack twice with multi-target attacks most of the time negates the usefulness of this (because the shields can only block one attack), and I realized it immediately.
- Haru also lacks Dodge Nuke because she ran out of skill slots, which is going to bite me in the ass hard.
Lets also review what weve learned about their attack patterns, with some additions for context.
- The Twins will move through a series of phases. This will start with lower-damage Physical and Gun strikes, before moving on to heavy Magic attacks. These will go in the order of Fire, Ice, Electricity, and Wind. This is as far as we have gotten.
- Each phase lasts exactly five turns, no matter how much damage you do.
- Failure to get the twins to the next HP gate by the time the corresponding phase starts will cause them to lose patience and wipe the party.
- When they pass 50% HP for the first time, each twin will cast Diarahan on each other, fully restoring their HP.
- Unlike Margaret, the Twins can break their own cycle of attacks to hit a specific party members weakness, as long at the element they use is within their current repertoire (so no Psy attacks during the first magic phase, or Fire attacks during the second). They can also break the cycle to use Technical attacks on an ally with an ailment. These opportunistic attacks will always be single-target, as opposed to their regular attacks which are always multi-target.
- They will always use a single-target attack to hit a weakness rather than a multi-target of the same element if available.
- Each twin uses a different set of elements. Both have Dekaja, Dekunda, Recarm, and Diarahan (all of which come from Pixie), but Caroline has the Physical (Slime), Fire (Jack oLantern), Electric (Agathion), Psy (Mandrake), and Bless (Shiisaa) attacks, while Justine has the Gun (Bugs), Ice (Jack Frost), Wind (Sudama), Nuclear (Onmoraki), and Curse (Bugs again) attacks. This means that to knock your party members down, they will have to do the actually-somewhat-involved-for-AI routine of knocking down every party member they can, Baton Passing (because they can only do that once), and then having their partner knock down the others. Also almost all their Personas are really low level for some reason. I guess they just wanna style on us.
- If there are buffs or debuffs active, they will end every set of knockdowns by removing them with Dekaja or Dekunda. Its very annoying to reapply them, but still much better than not having them up at all.
- Im just going to tell you now because you undoubtedly already know or have figured it out and Im not rerecording this thirty minute fight just to show it off, but we have to kill them both on the same turn, or the survivor will revive the other with half health. So we have to use multi-target attacks to try to keep their HP about even. Ryuji might be something of a hindrance in this fight because of his low Agility and the fact that Agneyastra does not have a consistent number of hits, so well try to keep him on Matarukaja duty.
Okay, lets finally get into this. I suggest you just watch the video if you care at all, because this fight doesnt change up very much. Ive already explained most of it.
Boss: The Twins
Music: Rivers in the Desert
This examination is meant to draw out your true strength, after all.
As I said earlier, they are going to hit (and crit) a lot.
A lot of this fight is just buff maintenance to make sure they dont nuke Maaku at the end of every round of knockdowns.
Were also going to miss a ton, too. Anyway, as earlier, this first round is just going to be Vajra Blast and Triple Down.
Harus Heat Riser definitely helps, but I probably ended up using it on the wrong person. Maakus stats are kind of ridiculous with Yoshitsune equipped, and Haru probably needs the Defense and Agility more.
Time for a phase change.
This time Fire, then Ice, then Electricity, then Wind.
And of course, they can and will inflict Burn, Freeze, and Shock, so watch out for that.
Whoever said Technical attacks were pointless?
Its a little worrying that were already using up our partys Endure skills this early in the fight.
And here comes Diarahan. Already? Were making good time.
I may actually be able to enjoy this beyond the scope of our examination.
Dont let us down, Inmate!
Another phase change. This time theyre going for Makotos Psy Weakness (it hits even with Dodge Psy, the cheaters), but the order is now Psychokinesis, Nuclear, Bless, Curse.
Weve unfortunately already spent Futabas Final Guard. This might be tougher than I thought going in
This is around the point when missed attacks start piling up, so I have to even their HP a bit by focusing single-target attacks on one or the other.
Perhaps it is time I begin getting serious
Note: getting serious here just means theyre gonna use all the different kinds of attacks in order. Its not that interesting, so lets just skip forward a bit.
Looks like we dont need to go easy on you anymore *chuckle* Youre way better than we thought youd be, Inmate! Well give it all weve got from now on!
See the hidden truth !
For this phase, theyll stick with the previous phases skill type order (Physical, Gun, Fire, Ice, Elec, Wind, Psy, Nuke, Bless, Curse), but this time use Severe-tier skills.
By far the most interesting part of this phase is these two attacks, which cannot kill us but will halve our current HP. It didnt happen in this run, but if you have a Persona that repels Bless or Curse and they hit you with the corresponding attack, it will launch back at them dealing a few thousand damage to the twin it hits because it also halves their HP.
Show us what lies beyond our limits! Show us who you arewho we are!
Dokay.
Weve almost got them, but we should probably hold off for this turn. If we defeat one at the end of a turn and not the other, its gonna be a problem.
One down...
And there go the terrible twins.
Im not rerecording this to cut out the trophy notification, you gotta deal with it.
Caroline and Justine, as well as Lavenza, are voiced by Carrie Keranen.
Music: Aria of the Soul
To a human ?
Caroline laughs.
It turns out even the rulers of power cant measure everything!
Caroline What did you just
Hm? Did I say something weird?
I will now tell you our embarrassing secret.
I legit forgot we were doing that.
To be perfectly honest From time to time, a strange feeling of unease falls over us. It is almost as though we are not ourselves, or that our true selves are in a place far, far away.
Huh ?
We are meant to be leading inmates through rehabilitation, yet we have doubts about our own validity. Could there be anything more humorous than that?
Oh, so thats what you meant
Laaaaaaaaaaame.
Are you not ashamed, Caroline? What did you think I was going to talk about?
S-Stop! My heart cant take this!
If the poses I just saw in the fight werent the embarrassing ones, Im not sure I wanna know what are.
It was then that I knew for certain Just as you have your goal of rehabilitation, we too have an objective we must achieve.
Were supposed to act as wardens for our master, right?
Well, um
...Inmate. I will now disclose the results of our examination. If I had to describe your current state
I require no thanks After all, I am the one forcing my own issues upon you.
If you continue to hold ties with us, we will surely arrive at the truth.
Well, I wont tell our master about this. Itll just be one of our secrets. Wait speaking of secrets, you only told him mine! This isnt fair
You would like one from me? Recently, whenever the inmate takes prolonged absences from our chamber
Um
According to human standards, directly conveying this emotion may be somewhat uncomfortable But that is how I feel Caroline is probably the same way.
I simply wanted you to know. Oh, you understand this is a secret to be kept between us, yes?
That second option, gooooooooooooooooooooooddammit
Sh-Shut up! She just said its a secret! O-OK, thats enough of that.
...Yes. Any further discussion may interfere with our work.
Things are gonna go back to how they were before. This special inspection was a one-time deal. Though I think we might feel a little differently when were watching over you from now on
Theres no need to be modest. It was definitely a solid battle. Take it. Its your reward for the special inspection.
All of these items are rewards for making it to each phase of the fight.
The Omnipotent Orb, on the other hand, makes the user immune to all damage except Almighty. Its broken as fuck. Usually they dont let you use it against the series bonus bosses, but this time they do! Weird! Though you have to do it on a repeat playthrough because its the reward for winning it, natch.
Now then, Ill leave the rest to Justine. ...And dont forget, your rehabilitation isnt over yet! One more thing Dont tell Master about what happened here. You absolutely cant tell him. You got that!?
Honestly, I do not feel particularly guilty about keeping this a secret.
O-OK, Inmate! Were gonna be watching you close than ever now! Y-You better remember that!
And Caroline disappears back into the Velvet Room. All there is now is some miscellaneous cleanup and the few remaining romance scenes. Well get to that in a bit.