Today started out with yet another grinding session in Persona 3, yielding a couple more personas and some minor equipment upgrades. I felt pretty much set after that, so I worked on social links a lot for the rest of the summer vacation, gaining a new social link with a dying youth and raising them with the girl at the shrine, the old couple, and the MMORPG player.

At one point Ken, the little kid, officially joined our shadow-hunting group, and soon afterward Shinjiro rejoined as well, though there’s still some unexplained history to him and his relationship with the group. I eventually maxed out the social links with the girl at the shrine and the old monk, and now that school’s started again, I have more free time to work on classmates now.

And it’s almost time for the full moon event, but I went back for one last grinding session to try and even out the levels a bit. I’m now level 41, with most everyone else around 35-38.

Today’s Persona 3 session started off with yet more grinding. This is the point at which it would be nice if there was a bit more variety to the Tartarus environments and levels, but at least it would be the last grinding session until the next full moon event. I also redid my personas again, getting better fire and frost attackers. After that I gained a new social link with a competitor from the swim meet, and worked on the monk and MMORPG player links a bit.

The full moon came and the boss fight turned out to be fairly easy. The only notable thing here is that we finally encountered the other group of creepy persona-users in person, and they yacked about how they’re planning on stopping us because they don’t want to lose the ability to use personas if we defeat the shadows. And a couple days after the fight, Koromaru joined the group and is now usable as a party member. Yes, the dog. I’ll also be able to take him for walks in the evening, giving me something to do now that I don’t have to work on character stats, having maxed them all out today.

I then dove straight into Tartarus again, and made it all the way up to the next barrier on floor 114 in a single night without anyone getting tired. The floor 98 boss was easy, and the floor 110 boss fight started out really badly, with three of us (including me) getting charmed right at the start of the fight, but I took a support role and the others slowly whittled him down. And after getting a bunch of levels, I was finally able to fuse a decent wind specialist persona, Orobas.

I’m pretty much already set for the next full moon event, so I can focus mainly on building more social links and grinding out some more levels and cash when there’s nothing better to do on an evening. And I think I’m pretty close to halfway through the game by the game’s calendar, with 43 hours put into it so far. I told you it would be a long one…

Good boy!

Wildly out-of-context chat quote:

It was back to more grinding in Tartarus in Persona 3 tonight, since I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for the next full moon event. Along the way I picked up a few more new persona, including an ice specialist, so I’m just missing a wind specialist now.

I took a shot at the floor 85 boss, but it started out horribly, with Akihiko missing a whole bunch of times, and the AE electric attack kept knocking Yukari and Mitsuru out. I spent way too many revival beads trying to keep them alive, but eventually gave up on them and kept going with just me and Akihiko gradually wearing it down, since we were pretty much immune to electric attacks.

And then after that was even more grinding, to try and get Mitsuru some levels since she’s been falling behind a bit. I also completed a couple more of Elizabeth’s quests, though the fusions necessary cost me a pretty penny. It’s only going to get more expensive, though…

Back in Persona 3, I gave the floor 72 boss a shot but got crushed quickly on the first attempt, as usual. I tried again, using the tactic of keeping all but one knocked down and having everyone else focus on the remaining one, when I discovered that Akihiko and Junpei were basically useless in this fight, doing hardly any damage or not doing anything at all. Although I was tempted to reset and get Mitsuru, Yukari and I managed to keep going and gradually wore them down, though it was a looong fight. After that I snuck up to the 85th floor, where the next boss is, but stopped there for the night, finally ending this game day that’s been split over four sessions now.

The group went on vacation, where more was learned about the incident ten years ago and Yukari’s family history. At the beach, Junpei initiated Operation Babe Hunt, where we successively got shot down by various groups of girls on the beach, including a transvestite. During that we discovered Aigis, a cyborg created to fight shadows by Mitsuru’s father’s company, and she joined the group. Disturbingly enough, the messages I get when I talk to her imply that I can become ‘closer’ to her.

And there were a couple more cutscenes with the three weirdos that also operate during the Dark Hour, and they’re apparently not so happy with our plans to destroy the tower and end it…

Tonight was, again, primarily more experimentation with fusions in Persona 3. I think I’ve got a decent set now though: a Narcissus with AE versions of all four elemental attacks and charm, a Hua Po fire attack specialist, and a new Oberon that specializes in electric attacks and recovery spells. I can’t really get at the higher versions of the other element types yet though, so I’m keeping Lilim around for those.

And then a brief run through a few floors of Tartarus to test them out turned out fairly well, including finding a couple good weapon upgrades for Yukari and Akihiko. That’ll lessen the sting of the time and equipment lost a couple days ago.

And in other news, the Rush album DLC for Rock Band that I was waiting for has been delayed by up to a couple weeks, potentially. There must be some kind of major problem that’ll require a game patch, or something…

Today’s Rock Band release (a full Rush album) has been delayed somewhat, so I was back to fooling around in Persona 3 today.

I didn’t really get much done, though. I need to redo my set of personas to make sure I’ve got all of the attack types covered in the most powerful form possible, make sure I’ve got the right healing and recovery spells, match up with the social links I’m working on, cover as many defenses for enemy attacks as possible, and so on. My Lilim has served well, with all four elemental attacks on it, but it doesn’t have the more powerful versions available now and I’m starting to see more enemies without any elemental weaknesses.

It’s tough though, because getting the combination of skills you want on a persona often requires fusing lower personas. But…it’s random which skills from the personas get combined (you can keep retrying before committing the fusion, at least), some skills don’t show up until the persona gains some levels, which depends on how strong the social links are, some skills can’t be merged at all depending on the types being merged, it costs a fair bit to buy the personas for fusing, and so on, which makes getting what you want rather tricky. I can specialize more narrowly, rather than trying to get multiple skills onto a single persona, but there’s a limited number of persona slots, too. It’s going to take a fair bit of experimentation.

So far I’ve got a Titan that covers all three physical attack types very well. Now I’m trying to get a Take-Mikazuchi that adds another element to the electrical attacks it has natively, but haven’t found a good combination for it yet.

My Persona 3 session tonight was cut off earlier than expected. I figured I’d get in some exploration of the newly opened block before the vacation started, and made my way up to the first boss floor. The enemies in this block are definitely a lot tougher; it took a while to learn all of their weaknesses and appropriate tactics to use on them, and there are still a few that put up rough fights.

But, on one of the trips up, I got careless and used an AE wind attack. Yup, against enemies that I had forgotten can reflect wind. All three hits were reflected back on me and I died instantly at the very start of the fight. I probably didn’t really lose that much time, since I’d been saving between trips up and this was probably the third or fourth trip, but I lost some really good equipment I’d found on a special floor on that trip, and I was too pissed off to continue any further tonight.

I took a shot at the floor 59 boss in Persona 3, but got wiped out pretty quickly since I didn’t have enough revives or health to withstand the AE attacks, so I did a bit more grinding in Tartarus. Soon after, I saw a cutscene of a mysterious group of assassins that operate during the dark hour, and then headed back to Tartarus and finally beat the boss.

There was still plenty of time to kill before the next full moon event, so I built up social links, maxing out the swim team and student council, and gained enough Academics skill to guarantee acing the exams coming up. I’m also now considered to be officially dating Yuko, which prevents me from building social links with any other girlfriends until I max her out, but none of the others are available yet anyway.

The full moon event arrived, taking place in a ‘love hotel’, and it was annoying because I lost the first boss fight, requiring reloading and redoing a whole bunch of cutscenes. The fight was actually going very well, but an unlucky few rounds of AE fear effects and attacks put me into one of those downward spirals of always trying to recover. It went fine on the second attempt, including a second boss fight after that.

Afterwards there was an explanation of the explosion incident ten years ago that seems to have created the shadows and Tartarus, though it doesn’t really change anything about what to do about it. And now, having aced the exams, we’re off on vacation for a week. Though it’s to a location that will undoubtedly touch upon that initial incident…