Part 225: Addendum XIV: Child’s Play

Addendum XIV: Child’s Play

Time to finally defeat Caroline and Justine, for real.



These are the Personas I’m bringing into this fight. We’re starting with Cybele for Auto-Marakukaja at the start of the fight, and we’ll 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, let’s 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, I’m going to explain some elements of my overall strategy heading in, and where they may fall short.

• First, I’ve 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 won’t 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. They’re going to hit us a ton, and they’re 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 he’s 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. We’re 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 Haru’s Heat Riser, which is single-target. So again, we’re 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.
  
  Let’s also review what we’ve 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 member’s 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 o’Lantern), 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. It’s very annoying to reapply them, but still much better than not having them up at all.
  
• I’m just going to tell you now because you undoubtedly already know or have figured it out and I’m 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 we’ll try to keep him on Matarukaja duty.
  

Okay, let’s finally get into this. I suggest you just watch the video if you care at all, because this fight doesn’t change up very much. I’ve 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 don’t nuke Maaku at the end of every round of knockdowns.



We’re also going to miss a ton, too. Anyway, as earlier, this first round is just going to be Vajra Blast and Triple Down.



Haru’s Heat Riser definitely helps, but I probably ended up using it on the wrong person. Maaku’s 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?




It’s a little worrying that we’re already using up our party’s Endure skills this early in the fight.



And here comes Diarahan. Already? We’re making good time.




I may actually be able to enjoy this beyond the scope of our examination.



Don’t let us down, Inmate!



Another phase change. This time they’re going for Makoto’s Psy Weakness (it hits even with Dodge Psy, the cheaters), but the order is now Psychokinesis, Nuclear, Bless, Curse.



We’ve unfortunately already spent Futaba’s 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 they’re gonna use all the different kinds of attacks in order. It’s not that interesting, so let’s just skip forward a bit.





Looks like we don’t need to go easy on you anymore… *chuckle* You’re way better than we thought you’d be, Inmate! We’ll give it all we’ve got from now on!



See… the hidden truth…!




For this phase, they’ll stick with the previous phase’s 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 didn’t 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 are—who we are!




D’okay.



We’ve 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, it’s gonna be a problem.



One down...



And there go the terrible twins.





I’m 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 can’t 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 that’s what you meant…

Laaaaaaaaaaame.

Are you not ashamed, Caroline? What did you think I was going to talk about?





S-Stop! My heart can’t take this!

If the poses I just saw in the fight weren’t the embarrassing ones, I’m 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.
We’re 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 won’t tell our master about this. It’ll just be one of our secrets. Wait… speaking of secrets, you only told him mine! This isn’t 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 it’s a secret! O-OK, that’s 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 we’re watching over you from now on…




There’s no need to be modest. It was definitely a solid battle. Take it. It’s 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. It’s broken as fuck. Usually they don’t 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 it’s the reward for winning it, natch.

Now then, I’ll leave the rest to Justine. ...And don’t forget, your rehabilitation isn’t over yet! One more thing… Don’t tell Master about what happened here. You absolutely can’t tell him. You got that!?
Honestly, I do not feel particularly guilty about keeping this a secret.
O-OK, Inmate! We’re 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. We’ll get to that in a bit.