Persona 5 - The Not-So-Holy Grail
There is only one logical thing left to do for the Phantom Thieves. For their biggest heist yet, Joker and friends will be stealing the hearts of the public. In turn they will get rid of the Metaverse once and for all. It is time to plunge the depths of the mementos and save the soul of the nation. Once they get to the end of the last level of the Mementos, the Thieves find another door that can take them past the point of no return.
There are people imprisoned here who do not want to leave because they are comfortable not having to think for themselves. Some of the people the Thieves have defeated, such as Kamoshida, are also in here. Witnessing all of the public taking the safety of prison over uncertainty of freedom shakes Joker’s faith in what he has been trying to achieve. If the people do not want to be free, is it really worth fighting for their freedom? It does not help Igor keeps telling him to leave everyone be. The bliss of ignorance is like a siren’s call. It dulls the struggle only until one crashes into the jagged rocks reality. The obliviousness takes away all the intrusive thoughts and lets one exist in the warm embrace of oblivion. But is that a life anyone really wants to live?
Joker decides he would rather struggle and be free than be blissful and ignorant. The friends agree with his assessment and everyone decides to keep going deeper until they can find the one who is corrupting the thoughts of all of the public.
I found the puzzles in this area to be interesting even though they weren’t anything new. Joker has to walk on the spaces in a specific order to make them all be the same color. They were just difficult enough to be satisfying when I solved them, but not frustratingly hard at the same time. Later on, the difficulty is increased when the game asks the player to complete it in a certain number of turns, but that was not too har either. Being Level 99 with the whole party made the enemy encounters almost insignificant, so traversal wasn’t as challenging as the first run.
The Thieves are now deep enough in the Mementos where the scenery has switched from slightly unsettling to downright horrific. The stairs are rib cages and the pipes running all around us resemble arteries. This is how Pinocchio must have felt when he was inside the whale. If you thought Persona 5 could not be any more red, guess again. Everything is crimson, except for when it blends into dark shadows. At the bottom of this hellscape is a grail into which all the arteries terminate. The subversion of the grail symbolism is hard to miss. The holy grail has been a symbol of religious purity ever since it was popularized by the Arthurian legends. It was the ultimate goal of the Knights of the Round Table, many of whom could not attain it due to the impurity of their souls. There are two levels of subversion here. Grail is the ultimate symbol of corruption here. It is at the bottom of Mementos, which is Persona’s representation of hell. I can not help but think the game is trying say something akin to “religion is the opiate of the masses”. On my first play through, I thought it came out of nowhere. Although the shadows are borrowed from different religious mythologies, the grail invoked religion more directly than anything else that came before it. I am still not sure why the theme of “religion as a corrupting force” is introduced so late in the game.
The second thing be subverted here is the idea of Grail being the ultimate goal of any quest. Here the Grail is clearly not the final boss. It is a battle we must fight before we go on to battle the true final boss. In the legends, Galahad was one of the achievers of the Holy Grail. Doing so completed his purpose in life to such finality, he no longer needed to be alive. But here The Grail just another obstacle on the way to the final fight.
As the fight starts, it quickly becomes clear to the whole team, they cannot do any substantial damage to this monster. The Grail is feeding on the lifeblood of the inmates. It does not matter how much we damage it, the will of the people negates any damage done to it. All it does is make the grail shinier. The grail kicks the Thieves out of Mementos and into Shibuya. That is not all, the Metaverse and our world start merging. The people who we have maxed out ranks with are able to notice the change, but everyone else seems to be completely. The people are too involved in the frivolities of their lives to remember anything important. As a side effect, the Phantom Thieves start to fade out of the combine cognition of the public. At the same time, they start fading away quite literally. As his friends turn into ash, Joker wakes up to find himself in the prison cell that represents the Velvet Room for him.
Joker has failed his rehabilitation, but Igor is oddly happy about it. He sentences Joker to be executed with unconcealed glee. It would not be a JRPG if there wasn’t an unwinnable fight in here. There is not much to do as Justine and Caroline give Joker a thorough beating. Even as he is beaten down, Joker is able to remind the two girls who they used to be. They are two parts of one person, torn apart by a malevolent force. This one person, named Lavenza, finally unmasks the entity who had been pretending to be Igor. This God of Control leaves and the real Igor is released from his grasp. Joker is reintroduced to the Velvet Room. His friends are also somewhere here, and they need to be regathered. In one of the more tedious portions of the game, Joker goes through the whole prison maze, and talks everyone of the Phantom Thieves out of their funk. Finally, the whole team is ready to find out what is going on and how to put a stop to it.
Morgana remembers who he is and how he was made to guide the Hero through the metaverse to achieve his true destiny. He leads the whole team out of the Velvet Room and toward the Malevolent God. As they get closer to facing this god, the public starts waking up to the dystopian horror their world has become. Soon we will be facing the ultimate battle for the reality of our universe.
Chrono Trigger - Schala
The graphics hold up very well!
Chrono Trigger is definitely not pro-royalty
One of the philosophers Crono talks to here explains all people do not have the ability to do magic. Only those who do live up here. The ones who don’t, still live on the ground and are known as Earthbound (I am one hundred percent sure this is a derogatory term in their world). There is no rhyme or reason to who gets the ability to use magic and who does not. It is luck of the draw. Sort of like being born into wealth. Already we can imagine the inequality of this society. We are only witnessing the lives of those who are well of so everything looks great. But those left behind on the ground probably have a hard life to suffer through. The magic users could easily share their talents and improve the lives of the unfortunate, but they choose not to. They are too selfish to care about “Earthbound”. Maybe the Queen was never benevolent. These people liked her because she was cruel to others, but not to them. Now they are worried because the leopards are eating their faces.
Who is this Janus?
Queen has two children, boy named Janus, and girl named Schala. Janus is the kid we met earlier, who predicted one our friends is going to die. Schala is the older sister. She is supposed to be the smart one. She is talented in magic; some say she is even more so than the Queen. When Crono walks into the room, he overhears them discussing the condition of their mother. They are worried about the Queen and the sudden change in her attitude. She is acting like a completely different person. They are especially worried about the control this new prophet has over her.
Crono follows Schala as she makes her way to the throne room. She has a pendant not unlike the one Marle carries (the one that got us all in this mess). The only difference is, Schala’s pendant is glowing. She stops in front of a door that looks familiar. Crono knows he has seen it before, but cannot remember where. The pendant glows and opens the door. Once Schala walks in, Crono tries the same thing, but without the glow the pendant does not have the power to open this door. There must be a place in here where we can charge the pendant and make it work. The answer lies in a room guarded by the most inept guard you will have the pleasure of meeting. He moves out of the way at the first sign of trouble. No fight, no struggle, only compliance. Inside there is a mech imprisoned in a beam of light. There is a glowing button on the front panel. When Crono interacts with it, Marle’s pendant starts glowing as well.
Is this a mech or golem?
Back to the room with awfully familiar looking door. Marle’s pendant works this time. This place looks eerily similar to the court room where the corrupt judge conducted a sham trial to wrongfully imprison Crono. The Queen is not amused with the team barging into her throne room. The prophet is also here, and he pours gasoline on the fire of by accusing Crono of being the seditionist he warned the Queen about earlier. She immediately orders Dalton to teach these people a lesson, who immediately orders his subordinate, Golem, to do the same. Neither Crono, nor his team is ready to deal with the Golem. He is too powerful for them, and the whole party is subdued in a matter of minutes. This is a fight the game expects the player to lose since the loss does not result in a game over. It is winnable when the player comes back to it in a New Game Plus mode. But even then winning does not change the ultimate outcome (just like being acquitted did not stop the judge from ordering Crono to be imprisoned). Dalton puts them in a beam jail just like the one mech was imprisoned in.
Against the protestations of her brother Schala decides to rescue our friends. She frees them from the beam prison and in return asks them to rescue Melchior. He had the audacity to disagree with the Queen and he was imprisoned somewhere. I always knew Melchior was old but had no idea he was ancient. At the fair in the beginning, ha had asked Crono to convince Marle into selling her pendant. He must have known the powers this pendant possesses. It is only logical to assume Schala and Janus are part of the same royal family that rules Guardia now. Marle is Schala’s descendant and this pendant has been passed down each generation through the ages. Somewhere along the way it probably lost the glow that made it special. I also wonder how many other places Melchior has popped up and I did not recognize him.
Before we can even begin to formulate a plan of escape, the prophet shows up. He wants to be rid of these pesky time travelers for good. This man is acting suspiciously like the Chancellor who was also hellbent on hanging Crono. Before he kills our friends, he wants to know how they came here. The prophet forces everyone to go to the cave on the ground where the time portal is. Once he has thrown the whole party through the portal, he makes Schala seal it so they can never come back. Schala is devastated but has to obey the prophet.
I have not played Crono Cross, but apparently that whole game takes place in an alternate reality just to explain what happened to Schala after the events of Chrono Trigger.
This is not a fight are heroes are prepared for at this time
Back in the prehistory, our heroes exit the portal, and it is sealed on this end as well. There are no more leads for them right now. AS they are going over the recent events, they realize why the throne room door looked so familiar. Crono and friends had seen a similar door in the post-apocalyptic future when they were trying to access the food stores. With the charged pendant, they can go back to the future and see what is behind the door. There may even be another portal there leading them back to Zeal.
The prophet has no idea what kind of a tenacious bunch of heroes he has messed with.
12-20-2020
Schala is forced to seal the time portal
Witcher - Assault on Khaer Morhen
Having played the third game before the first is an odd experience. When Geralt was rescued we met the other witchers and triss for the first time. And yet it feels like meeting old friends. I have already seen Geralt fight side by side with Vesemir and fall in love with Triss (I know, I know. It was the wrong decision. I am already sorry about it). But here we are seeing them all interact with each other for the first time. It does help, their relationships with each other feel. For example, Triss and Eskel quibble all the time while Vesemir gets annoyed at them. The player can feel they are comfortable being around each other. It is easy to see the familiarity, even if Geralt does not remember it. The good thing about playing Witcher now is knowing I will be getting a great story. I am much more willing to overlook the flaws of this game now because I have a better grasp of the setting and the characters. This world feels so lived in, so old and comfortable. Like an old pair of jeans. Maybe it is a little worn and frayed, but I know I will be relaxed when I wear it.
Conveniently, Geralt has amnesia so everything will have to be explained to him again. It is one of the oldest tropes in story telling (just take a look at the number of entries under Amnesiac Hero on TV Tropes). But I am ok with this as well. It is better than clunky dialogue that makes no sense in the context of the scene because every character in the story is already aware of the information.
Before Geralt could settle in and start recuperating, Khaer Morhen was attacked by the villagers. This assault caught the witchers by surprise. They had kept to themselves, and in return the nearby villagers had chosen to ignore them. As these people started breaking in, it was clear someone else was pulling the strings behind the scenes. These ordinary villagers walked invaded the keep with a giant monster. The kind only sorcerers would have been able to control. Vesemir could not think of what anyone would want from this place. Khaer Morhen had been a shadow of its former self ever since it was last attacked. There was nothing of value here for the sorcerers to get. Triss Merigold, being a sorceress herself, could understand their motivations much better. These people were here to steal the alchemical secrets of the Witchers.
The potions that transformed an ordinary human into a witcher granted special powers, like immunity to diseases, quick healing, and increased strength. It was not an easy transformation. Most people were not strong enough to withstand it. Their mind, body or both would break under the stress of the transformation. Even those who survived, became sterile. Geralt’s white hair was a direct result of the stress these potions put him through. All of this meant the schools of witchers guarded their potions with their lives. Lest they fall into wrong hands and cause havoc.
As bad as the frontal assault was, the worst was yet to come. The sorcerers had breached the keep and were about to get into the laboratory. Thankfully Triss was here. Without her, the three witchers did not stand a chance against the magic of these thieves. Even though Geralt could not remember who he was, swordsmanship was second nature to him. He had not forgotten how to fight. He picked up a sword to defend his home, even though he could not yet remember it. He easily fought off the unskilled villagers who were sent storming the keep and secured the courtyard.
Vesemir agreed with Merigold’s assessment that the thieves were going to be heading for the laboratory. He asked Triss, Leo and Geralt to stop the thieves from getting the potions, while he defended the keep with the other two witchers, Eskel and Lambert. Leo was not a witcher yet, but he was training to be one. Triss was strong enough to take care of the sorcerers with her magic. She would be needed to fight magic with her own magic.
As they made their way to the labs, another magician walked through the portal. Geralt told Triss to keep going while he stopped this one. With the one spell he remembered and a sword in hand, Geralt got ready to face this Salamandra wizard. It was a long and brutal fight but the Witcher emerged victorious. There was not enough time bask in the glow of the victory. Geralt made his way through the rubble only to find Triss incapacitated. There was not enough time to help her right now. The thieves were getting away.
Geralt and Leo got to the labs, but they were already too late. The mysterious man with the tattoos had what he came here to steal. He instructed the Professor to take care of the problem before leaving. The Professor put a bolt through Leo to keep Geralt occupied as he also stepped through the portal to make his escape.
The bolt was fatal, Leo did not survive his wounds. Triss was luckier, with the help some potions she recovered. There was nothing left at Khaer Morhen for the witchers anymore. They wanted to avenge the death of their friend and for that they would have to leave the safety of their home. The Witchers and the sorceress only stayed at the keep long enough to give Leo a proper funeral. At Vesemir’s suggestion they all split to cover more ground and find the mysterious man who had ransacked their home and killed their companion.
Geralt was to go south where the king of Temeria owed him for lifting the curse of Striga from his daughter, while the other chose their directions. It was just a few days ago Geralt had come back home and it was time to go again. It was a difficult goodbye for Triss. And once more Geralt was on his own ready to wander the Continent again.
I was sad to see Khaer Morhen in the dilapidated condition, but it is home. When Geralt was running through the keep gathering the ingredients for the potion we could see how much renovation this place needed. There are places here I recognize from future events, like the hall the three witchers sit and get drunk in. Even right at the beginning of the game, I was invested in this world enough, I was saddened to hear them leave the keep behind. I know they will come back here and protect it against another attack at the end of the trilogy, but that does not make abandoning it right now any easier. As for now, the witchers no longer have a home.
12-12-2020
Chrono Trigger - Kingdom of Zeal
The Ice Age
The place where Tyranno’s Lair used to be is now a giant crater. Lavos erased every sign of the magnificent building that once stood here, and with it all the reptites who built it. I was wrong about them being the ancestors to the fiends. The reptites were genius dinosaurs who died when a meteor crashed into the planet. Maybe some of the ones who were living underground survived and fiends might descend from those. Crono decides to survey the crash site and see the damage Lavos has caused.
At least they have elevators
Lavos has already buried itself deep into the ground and lies dormant. Wiping out a sentient race must be tiring. A gate has appeared here. What have we got to lose? Let’s go see what is on the other end of this portal. Crono walks out on the other end and into a cave. Once the party exits the cave, we see everything is covered in snow. Our friends make the trek towards the only man-made structure on the continent. Maybe there is a village there and we can get our bearing by talking to someone. Ayla is also with us. She has decided to stick by with her friends. Now that Kino can be trusted to hold down the fort back home, Ayla is more comfortable leaving the tribe under his command.
Azala was right about the whole world turning cold in the aftermath of the meteor crash. Not much has survived the cooling climate. It does not look like this area is exactly teeming with life. The structure we saw earlier is not a village either. It is some sort of a sky lift, and there is not a soul around to explain it to our party. Crono decides to take the lift and see if he can find a person on the other end.
The structure beams everyone to an island in the sky. This is the most gorgeous place I have seen in this game yet. And for some reason I cannot remember it at all. I don’t recall it from my previous plays. It is not like I have never been here because I have beaten the game. Which I cannot do without passing through here. I also remember some of the events that will take place while I am in this kingdom. But the place itself seems completely new to me.
I wonder how Ayla feels when she sees this place. Even though it is still in the past for the rest of the party, this is Ayla’s future. In abstract, everyone knows they will die one day. To see the reality of it in person must be a whole another experience. There is no sign of her tribe. In fact, this world is so different from the one she comes from, it must look alien to her. How does one come to terms with the reality that they and their way of life is so transient, it will fade away from the face of the world once they are gone? It must be especially traumatic after having just witnessed a whole species being wiped out of existence in an instant. If this bothers her, Ayla certainly does not show it.
Magic Kingdom of Zeal
The whole team goes into the first village they see. This is a society more advanced than most we have seen until now. It may even be more advanced than the one Crono, Marle and Lucca come from. “This is the Magic Kingdom of Zeal, where dreams can be made reality.” Which is probably why everyone here is asleep or about to fall asleep. Zeal is ruled by a Queen (how many of those are in this game?) After the King died, she encouraged technological advancement through research in magic. As a result, the magic users prospered and built a great society in the sky, away from the ravages of the climate on the ground. Until recently, she used to be a benevolent ruler. Ever since the arrival of a shady prophet, the Queen has devolved into a paranoid and cruel ruler.
Prince Valium would have loved this place.
While the party is exploring this place, they come to meet a child who tells them one of them will die soon. Considering we can bring multiple different party members and only one of the three will be ever present, it is not hard to figure out who he is talking about. Everyone is shook. Lucca tries to disregard the doom prophecy by saying it is unscientific, but everyone is thinking about it. I wonder who this child is. Have we met him before? Are we going to meet him again? Only time will tell.
There is a skyport right next door. Crono goes there to check on the flying ship currently parked on the dock. Every Final Fantasy and FF adjacent RPG gives the party a flying ship to travel around in (usually late in the game). Hopefully we will be getting this one, but now is not the time. For now, it is under the captaincy of Queen’s knight, Dalton. This man is as much of an obnoxious prick as his name suggests. Even his sprite smirks at me. Although we all thoroughly hate this man, there is nothing we can do to him at this moment. Might as well move on and find our way to the palace.
Crono makes his way through the caves to reach the top of the mountain where the Queen resides. This is a magnificent palace, likes of which our friends have never seen before. As we enter, the party witnesses the bustle of a busy city. There is magical research being conducted here. Unlike the first sleepy village we saw, this place is alive with activity. One of the magicians is working on creating capsules that grant permanent status boosts. He keeps losing the ones he makes because someone keeps taking them. Crono stays quiet about using the ones he has been finding all over time and space. Magic is the way of life for the denizens of Zeal. These people live in the skies, having long since abandoned the ground. They no longer need the energy from the sun. Now they use Lavos as their energy source. We have talked of this game being about fossil fuels and their harmful effects on the climate. If we needed more evidence to that effect, this kingdom is it.
12-20-2020
I know a place where we could charge this too.
Persona 5 - Masayoshi Shido
With the route to treasure secured, only thing left to do is to send out the calling card. The Thieves do not have access to this man, so something grand needs to be done to get his attention. With Futaba on their side, anything is possible. With everything at stake, the Thieves make this their biggest declaration yet. They hack into the public broadcasting system; the Phantom Thieves announce Shido’s crimes and their intention to change his heart. He has been warned. As an added bonus the broadcast also lets everyone know Joker is still alive. The conspiracy to kill him has failed, even though Akechi had been on tv just days earlier alleging the Phantom Thieves leader had committed suicide under police custody. The police that were already looking inept, come off as even less trustable now. Shido publicly denies any claims made by the Thieves but prepares for fight in private.
This will be sweet battle. With the history between Joker and Shido, the whole team has been raring to take him down. Add to that the fact that he has just murdered Akechi (who was his own son), has also murdered Futaba’s mother, and has put out a hit on the whole team. Every single boss battle has been personal for at least one member of the team, but this man has slighted every single member of the Phantom Thieves. Add to that the fact they are fighting for the soul of their society and the stakes become clear. The Phantom Thieves will either take him down or die trying.
And boy did I die trying last time. There is a significant difficulty spike here. Actually, it is not even a difficulty spike. There is one specific situation in the battle that causes everyone to die and there is only one real solution to it. I banged my head against this battle multiple times before finally giving up and looking up how to survive this fight. There is a point in the battle where Shido casts a spell to reflect physical damage back on to the player. Then he attacks the players to cast rage on them. With rage in place the defense falls, and the character is no longer under player control. By this time everyone dies, with only Joker alive and he is afflicted with rage. He attacks Shido who reflects the physical damage back on to him and kills him. The battle just ends here. There are (I think) two ways to survive this. Cast a defense boosting spell on everyone. Joker will still be enraged and attack Shido but he will survive the reflected damage. He can go into the battle with a persona that nulls physical damage or makes him immune to rage. I ended up going with the second method. With Joker being immune to physical damage, I was able to withstands this chain of attack.
Shido is still a tough battle. When his HP gets lower, he gets more turns. This quickly gets frustrating. This time around I am so overpowered, Shido is not going to do much to me. Again, this guy tries to compare himself to the Thieves. He is just following the will of the people. This gaslighting with “you and I are the same” needs to stop. This man has tried to frame teenagers, had multiple people killed, used all kinds of criminals to raise campaign money. All of that to take over a country. He is nothing like the Phantom Thieves. Granted, Thieves are also vigilantes and not exactly bringing about the change the right way. But they have certainly not been running a criminal conspiracy that borders on sedition. Depending on the laws of the land he may even be charged with treason.
Shido is not the one to admit defeat. Once he realizes he is about to have a change of heart, he asks his doctor to poison him and put him in suspended animation. It will cause his palace to collapse and kill the Thieves. Once that happens, they can bring Shido back to life. The plan almost works but the Thieves have taken the treasure already. As the ship is capsizing, they make a run for the exit. It is never clear where they have to get to in order to exit the metaverse. Most of the team makes out but the see Ryuji not making out in time.
Once outside, everyone is in a shock. The girls start crying, only for Ryuji to show like nothing happened. The girls are so relieved they start beating him up right away. I understand they may feel annoyed that he worried them but beating him up seemed a little excessive. On the other side, the doctor brings Shido back. At first it looks like the trick worked. But then Shido starts crying and starts confessing to all his crimes. His cronies can not allow him to talk to the press. It is not just him, they are all complicit in the conspiracy to rig the election. The rest of his gang decides to tell everyone he is sick and under medical care. How long that will last, we don’t really know.
The whole team must have been feeling great at this moment in time. They have taken out Shido, who was the head of this conspiracy. Every member of the team as well as the country is now safe. They must have thought there is nothing to worry about anymore, and they can go about enjoying Christmas without a care in the world. Sae shows up and tells Joker he will have to turn himself in. Joker wants to keep all his friends out of harm’s way, so he agrees to it. In turn Sae promises to get him acquitted. All Joker asks is one more day to spend with someone he loves. Here we get to choose who he will spend the day with. This time I chose to romance Makoto and spend the evening with her.
Joker goes to jail the next day. Many days pass while he is in there. His friends come to visit. Sae has kept her promise. Joker is finally free to go home. While he was in custody, Shido confessed to his crimes. But it seems like nothing has stuck in the public’s memory. People are more worried now because he is not leading Japan. Everyone has forgotten about the Phantom Thieves. The events of December are just fading away from the collective memory of the society. This does seem alarming. The Phantom Thieves band again to solve this mystery.
05-23-2020