It was back to the usual combination of working on social links and grinding in Persona 3, of course. I worked on getting closer to the old couple, rival athlete (is everyone’s parents dead?), the dying guy at the shrine, and the french transfer student, as well as building a new link with a business man at the mall (who turned out to be the shopping channel host). And I also maxed out the link with Yukari, freeing me up to build up another girlfriend. Love ’em and leave ’em…

I still have to start links with Mitsuru and Chihiro, as well as max out a bunch of others, and with about three game months left to get those remaining 64 or so ranks, it might be tight. I probably won’t max out all of them though, since that requires you to be fairly efficient at building those links, and I’ve gotten sloppy in a few places. The only real benefit to it is the ability to create Orpheus Telos, the ultimate persona, and that’s only really needed for an optional dungeon. It would be much easier in a New Game+ with all of the personas and stats available right away, but I doubt I’ll go that far anyway.

And I also popped back into Tartarus for some more grinding, but the main result of that trip was taking the time to make a bunch of new personas, so that I now have stronger fire, electric, and dark attacks, and a better healing specialist. I have 52% of the compendium collected so far, and have started making some of the special persona combinations as well. I won’t be able to make it for a while yet, but one of them will be a bit…different…

It was time for the next full moon event in Persona 3, which turned out to be a rather unusual fight against two shadows, Fortune and Strength. Fortune was an unattackable one, and each round it summoned a roulette wheel, where I had to press a button and see what effect it landed on. The effects could be beneficial or harmful to either us or the enemy, and my first attempt I failed miserably as I kept getting hit with bad effects. On the second attempt, I finally got the timing of the roulette wheel down (hint: press X just as the effect you want almost reaches where the horse-thingy is sitting on top of the wheel) and the battle was fairly easy.

And then it was time for all sorts of drama as Ken confronted Shinjiro about the ‘incident’ between them and his mother in the past, the Strega guy showed up, and we lost Shinjiro. Dammit, I’d just bought him all the best equipment…

After that I worked on a couple social links, maxing out the fat kid in the creepy cult, but it wasn’t long before Tartarus opened up again. And once again I made it up all the way to the next barrier in one shot. The floor 146 boss was fairly tough, since there were three enemies who could use AE attacks — if they all launched them in the same round, it would be certain death. But I managed to scrape through by keeping one or two of them charmed whenever possible. And then the floor 160 boss was fairly easy in comparison. He mainly used physical attacks that weren’t difficult to recover from, so it just took a while to whittle down his health. And every once in a while we’d get into a cycle where he’d cast a group defense reduction and I’d just cast a group defense increase in return.

So, now it’s just more social links and grinding for the next 27 days until the next full moon event.

And speaking of the Strega guys, meet their leader, Evil Jesus:

It was another long day in Persona 3, of course. The full moon event came and was a pretty easy fight, and then it was back to working on social links for a while. I gained links with Bebe of the fashion club and Yukari, which I apparently could have gotten earlier but hadn’t realized it, since I hadn’t talked to them while at the school. Oh well, I don’t think it’ll put me too far behind on link development.

I finally maxed out the social link with Yuko, which took longer than expected since she was unavailable over the entire summer vacation. It’s worth it though, as that lets me make Siegfried, who is supposed to be one of the best personas. I also frees me up to date other girls now, so I’ll be working on Yukari next. There was also some more background about Shinjiro and Akihiko revealed during those days, and we captured Chidori, one of the members of Strega, and Junpei’s taken a bit of a liking to her (despite having been kidnapped by her…).

Eventually we headed back to Tartarus, where the floor 122 boss fight wasn’t too bad. But the floor 135 boss, oh boy… It was the infamous Sleeping Table, which spams a lot of extremely high-damage AE spells, one of which is a type that cannot be resisted. My first attempt actually went fairly well; with half the team on healing duty they were able to patch up after the AE attacks well enough and it was just a battle of attrition as we gradually wore him down. Until he only had a sliver of health left and the other party members decided to start doing physical attacks instead of healing themselves. They missed, leaving me to do the healing, but I didn’t get myself quite up to full health, and the next round it unleashed the most powerful AE attack, killing me instantly.

Several other attempts at the Sleeping Table went far worse than that, with group members getting knocked out early on, or I would get hit by fear, be unable to act, and get hit by an instant-death-if-feared spell on the next turn. Eventually I just cheesed my way through the battle by using a bunch of magic mirrors at the start of the battle, which reflected the AE lightning attack back onto him and let the rest of the party unleash attacks instead of having to heal, which softened him up a lot. And then after that I did a bit more grinding for levels for Ken, Koromaru, and Aigis, who had been falling behind a bit.

And then it was back to working on social links, where I finally maxed out the link with Kenji, the classmate, started one with Fuuka, and the story with the MMORPG player took a weird turn, as she told me about how she was secretly in love with a boy in the class she teaches, with clear hints that this player was actually my teacher and she was unknowingly referring to me…

I can also fuse four or more personas at a time now, which is needed for some special combinations, and rounded out the day with some more grinding in Tartarus, since there isn’t much else to do in the evenings when Koromaru doesn’t want to go for a walk.

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.