It was finally time for the endgame in Persona 3, and I loaded up my party with Yukari, Junpei, and Aigis and headed back up to the top of Tartarus. Spoilers, duh:

Since Armageddon is a rather cheesy spell, I decided to hold back and not use it unless I got into really deep trouble, but I wound up not using it at all. I also stripped the rest of the party members of all of their best equipment, giving them their second-best stuff instead, so that the best stuff carries over to the New Game+.

First up I first fought Jin and learned more about Strega’s origins, and then fought Takaya, whereupon he blabbed on and on with his philosophical mumbo jumbo about the future being meaningless. They were pretty easy though, and barely even scratched my group.

Then it was time for the fight with Nyx’s avatar, which turned out to be a series of fights where Nyx would rotate through the major arcana, and I had to beat each one. This was fairly easy again, as I just kept casting Morning Star and the rest of the group did fairly large chunks of damage too, with only the occasional healing necessary. When Nyx’s avatar reached the Death arcana, he took on his final form and gain a lot more health and new abilities, and the tougher part of the battle began.

It was actually still fairly easy, though. Even hobbling myself, I guess I was just way overleveled. None of his attacks really did enough damage to put anyone in extreme danger, the poison he cast a few times never stuck, and the Moonless Gown ability that reflected damage back could be waited out (though a couple party members went ahead and attacked and knocked themselves out anyway, the dummies). It just took a while to eat through his health with a constant stream of Morning Star attacks and healing and SP replenishment when necessary.

After beating him, the end of the world seemed to be imminent anyway, but I was whisked back to the Velvet Room, where the power of the social links I had maxed out came to help me, and I wound up in the real final battle against Nyx’s true form. This was a Final Fantasy X-ish unloseable battle though, and the game was essentially already won. And then I wound up back at school again, with one last chance to talk to schoolmates and townspeople, getting oft-amusing quips from each that helped wrap up their individual stories, before the main character’s rather sad ending.

And so ended Persona 3 FES, after 122 hours of play. I’ve put more hours total into other games, but I think this is by far the one that took the longest time just to get through the main story. I did do a lot of the ‘optional’ stuff like Elizabeth’s quests, Monad, and a lot of grinding for those, though.

There’s ‘The Answer’ part of the game that FES added as well, and I started playing it, but I’m not sure if I’ll bother finishing it. A lot of people didn’t like it nearly as much, it’s a lot harder, it’s missing the social mechanics of the original, and the has the whiniest robot ever.