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:

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: