I found some lists of good fusions in various forums and FAQs, but most take a lot of time, effort, and money in merging a whole lot of steps together, often requiring low-chance combinations that you have to keep retrying over and over and over. So, I just put together a good Helel one, with Victory Cry and Spell Master.

That’s pretty powerful as it is, though; when I also have the Satan persona around, I can cast the Armageddon spell that does 9999 damage to all enemies, which is good enough to kill them all but one special one (which I can’t fight on the first playthrough anyway). Normally Armageddon has a mana cost equal to your entire mana pool, but Victory Cry replenishes all of my health and mana after each fight, so I can keep casting it in every fight. And Spell Master halves the mana cost, so I could spend some mana out of combat and still be able to cast it in the next fight. So, yeah, I’m pretty much unstoppable now.

I also got tired of farming heart items from Messiah, since I kept getting the same ones, but I did at least get one Omnipotent Orb out of him, which blocks all physical and magic damage. Which isn’t quite full invulnerability since I can still take ‘almighty’ damage, but it’s not like they’re going to get a turn to attack after Armageddon…

Anyway, I could continue futzing around with personas for ages. Tomorrow, I start heading for the endgame in earnest. Oh, and apparently Chidori is alive again now, but has amnesia. Original!