I didn’t even progress a single game day in Persona 3 tonight, as I spent it all working on personas instead. I combined up a whole bunch of ones I was still missing and now have 85% of the compendium filled. The remaining ones are mostly ones that are difficult to get because they either require a maxed social link, they’re beyond my level, or their combinations are a bit weird and you have to start at the top-level ones in their arcana and work downwards.

After that, I put together a handful of personas specifically for farming heart items from them. This is how I’ll get the immunity items I need to take on the Reaper comfortably, using Surt for the fire immunity, Gabriel for the frost immunity, Jatayu for wind, and Thor for electricity. All you have to do is fuse them however many times you need until you get a notification that they have a heart item, level them up until just before the point you get the item, and register them in the compendium. Then you can cycle through leveling them up to get the item, ditching that one, and buying the old one from the compendium to level it up and get the item again. Having Growth 3 on them helps a lot since then you don’t have to use them specifically in combat.

I now have everyone’s elemental weaknesses covered with immunities except Akihiko; Gabriel is taking longer to level up since I failed to get a Growth skill on it and the associated social link is fairly low. It’s only a couple levels away now though, so it won’t be too long.

I got back to Persona 3 tonight, but it was mostly just grinding in Tartarus, since there’s not much else to do while the winter vacation is still going and you can’t work on schoolmate social links. I also fused a bunch of the special combo personas, though I still have about 25% of the compendium missing. I’m almost at the money cap though, so I’ll be able to afford to spend some time storing, fusing, and repurchasing personas sometime soon.

And I finally gained a high enough level to make a rather…different persona that I alluded to earlier…:

Yes, it is. But it’s an equal opportunity game.

It’s the final stretch in Persona 3, and as soon as the last month started I headed straight to the final block of Tartarus. I made it all the way up to floor 244 on the first night before getting tired, fighting four bosses along the way: the floor 220 boss used a lot of elemental attacks, but wasn’t too bad; the one on floor 228 was annoying since they kept draining my SP, but wasn’t too tough otherwise; the floor 236 boss liked to throw around instakill attacks near the end but I was well-protected thanks to a persona null to both light and dark; and the floor 244 bosses used a ton of heavily-damaging physical attacks and I just kept everyone else healed up. I had to wait until the third night to head up and beat the last boss on floor 252, and he was a piece of cake as long as you’re null to rage effects so you don’t lose control.

Along the way I also automatically gained ranks in the Nyx Annihilation Squad social link and can now create the ‘Messiah’ persona. Well, I’ll be able to when I hit level 90, anyway…

So, with all of Tartarus cleared out now only three days into the month, the next major event won’t happen until the end of the month, so I have plenty of time to work on social links, grind for levels, items, and cash, and to work on fusing personas and doing Elizabeth’s quests.

Speaking of which, one of them is to kill The Reaper, and I took a quick try at it but got wiped out with him down to about 80% health. I’ll probably try again when my level’s into the 80s instead (currently 74), but it doesn’t look like it’ll be *too* difficult, just a really loooong battle of attrition. I’ll have to make sure I get items to cover the party’s elemental weaknesses, too, since the Reaper is pretty good at exploiting them. Killing him will get me into the ‘Monad’ dungeon, where I can gain levels much faster.

Then again, Monad is more of an optional bit, and this game is taking long enough as it is… (97 hours on the clock so far.)

After a bit more grinding in Tartarus for Elizabeth’s missions, I worked on more fusions for a bit, and now have about 3/4 of the compendium filled out. I also worked on social links, maxing it out with the dying youth, but there are more days now with nothing to work on. Most of the remaining links are fellow students, and you can’t work on those during the exam and winter breaks.

At the end of the month came the time for a big decision, which decides whether I get the good ending or the bad ending. I chose the good one for now of course, but have a save here so I can come back and try the bad ending as well at some point. This maxed out the SEES social link and started a new one for the “Nyx Annihilation Squad”. I’m now on to the final month of the game, where we have to reach the top of the tower and confront this Nyx thingie, and it shouldn’t take more than a few days.

I popped back into Persona 3 for a bit and although there wasn’t another full moon boss shadow fight, the plot still advanced steadily. Evil Jesus came back again, big surprise, and took Chidori back out of the hospital. We had to fight her, after which she realized we were right and converted to our side…for about 30 seconds before she sacrificed herself, anyway.

After that I finished off the rest of the floors in the 5th block, where the bosses were fairly easy. And shortly after that there was a bunch of cutscenes with a revelation about a new kid that we had recently met, his relationship to me and Aigis and what happened ten years ago, and the end of the world. The usual.

And of course there was more work on social links, finally starting one with Mitsuru and maxing them out with the old couple and Tanaka. There’s about a month and a half of game time to go now, and it’s looking like I’ll have to forgo maxing out one of the schoolmates’ social links. It’ll probably be Chihiro, since her ultimate persona is a lower-level one not needed for any of the special combos.

It was time to move on to the next block of Tartarus in Persona 3, but first I spent some time redoing personas again, getting a few of the better top-tier ones like Siegfried and Odin, and fusing Growth 2 onto a few others.

The graphics in block 5 of Tartarus were a bit unexpected, as it looks like some kind of trippy disco, with neon point lights and lines all over the place. The floor 171 boss fight was a bit tricky since their AE electric attack kept killing party members, but with Odin not only was I immune to them but getting hit with electric attacks heals me, so I wound up finishing off the fight entirely by myself. Having Mitsuru would have made it even easier, but she was away at the time.

On a second trip after Mitsuru finally came back, I made it up to the floor 180 boss fight, which was fairly easy as I just had to keep pounding them with my own AE electric attack. And I made it all the way up to the floor 190 boss as well (the fifth block doesn’t appear to have the same barriers after each set of two bosses), which was supposed to be a tough fight due to its tendency to throw around instakill attacks, but I wound up beating it in two turns thanks to a crit from Siegfried and an all-out attack.

Ah, Siegfried. His vorpal blade attack hits everyone and does extra damage when I’m in ‘Great’ condition (which is almost all the time now, since I don’t have to study at night), and with it I can one-shot most of the monsters I run across now. I’ve also got ‘Cool Breeze’ fused onto him, so I regain some health and SP at the end of the fight. I can pretty much sustain myself indefinitely now, instead of having to return to the first floor to regenerate every once in a while. He’s by far the most powerful persona I’ve made so far.

Despite only progressing a few days forward in Persona 3, it took quite a while tonight. I took one last run at Tartarus and found the rare item I missed yesterday, and then it was time for the full moon event. Strega showed up again, and after beating them, it looks like that’s the last I’ll see of Evil Jesus. Then it was time for the battle against the final major shadow boss, which turned out to be pretty easy, since I’m probably a bit overlevelled at this point thanks to all the grinding.

Of course, that wasn’t going to be the sudden end of the game… The requisite Big Plot Twist occurred, and we’re now somehow closer to the end of the world than ever, and there was much angsting and plotting and derailment of plans in a bunch of cutscenes.

After that I started preparing for the next block of Tartarus by starting the process of making some of the unique weapons available via weapon fusion, and doing some of Elizabeth’s quests that just opened up (resulting in a bunch of maid outfits for the female party members…). And I finally maxed out the social link with the MMORPG player, putting a touching, poorly spelled cap on her story.

It was a pretty uneventful night in Persona 3, with more grinding in Tartarus, though this time the goal was to find certain weapons from rare chests, as part of Elizabeth’s missions. I only found one of them, though; I’ll have to come back for the other when I’m higher level and can just run through the floors without fighting anything. I’m pretty much set for the next full moon event, anyway.

And I also worked on social links, of course, finally befriending Chihiro and getting friendlier with Fuuka, the photography club, and (ugh) Bebe. I miscounted the number of ranks I have to go though, since I forgot I still have to add Aigis, so I now still have 66 ranks to be gained within the last 90 or so days.

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: