Persona 5 - Caught!
There is a slight change of plans once the route to the treasure in the casino is secured. Akechi suggests we should wait until the last possible day before we go back in to steal her treasure. When I played for the first time, it felt like a weak excuse to change up the game. This time I know that is exactly how it is supposed to come off. This is one of the rare times in the narrative where only the player is unaware of the drama. Akechi knows he is setting up a trap. The Phantom Thieves know of his trap and setting one of their own. Akechi needs time to set up his ambush so he needs them to go in at a set time. He gives a weak excuse to buy time. None of the Thieves push him too hard on it because they are already aware of what he is trying to do.
Instead of going in, I spent time levelling up the confidants. I think I have read most of the books available to me. There are a few I don’t think I will be able to get this time around. This is the kind of thing you really have to optimize for right from the beginning. The only way to do so is to use a guide. Not all the Mementos requests are done either. I didn’t open all of them up. If I can open them up, I can do them in the flu season, while cheesing the Reaper. That should make all the subsequent boss battles a lot easier, too.
My first run was on Easy. Most of the game was a cakewalk, but there were some frustrating difficulty spikes. Battle with Shido and the final boss battle readily come to mind. They were teeth grindingly hard. Mostly because I went in without preparing for them. It does not matter what difficulty you are playing on, if you don’t bring the right personas, you are going to be in for a hard time. This play was on Normal difficulty, and I still did not have any truly frustrating encounters. Having more Personas to choose from definitely helps. More importantly knowing which ones will be effective in each palace makes my life a whole lot easier. I have been saying the palace runs have been smoother because I know how to solve the puzzles. I had not realized until now, a major part of easier dungeon runs was knowing what to take in each one. Buffs and debuffs play an important role in defeating enemies. Physical attacks will get the job done but they take longer, and the players take more damage because they are in battle longer.
I talked of the unfairness in the judicial system. The theme plays out once more in the Sae Nijima boss battle. She is the prosecutor in his case so it is only normal she will be using all the tricks to defeat Joker. The battle takes place on the Roulette Board. The Thieves can not attack her without incurring a penalty, and they keep losing when they make the bet. It looks like all is lost until Akechi figures out Nijima is cheating. There are glasses on top of the numbers, so they flip over if the ball lands on a winning number for Joker. He sends out one of the team members to shoot at the glass when the ball stops. This breaks the glass and Joker wins the bet.
Sae does not take kindly to being exposed as a cheat. She turns into Leviathan. Mokoto is horrified to see what her sister has become. This is not the person she set out to be. She was ambitious and out to make her career in criminal law, but it was not at the expense of her integrity. In her pursuit of success, Sae has distorted her own sense of justice. Once the Thieves beat her, she returns to her original form. Someone has notified the police and they are all coming after the Phantom Thieves. It is time for the party to split up. Joker is going to distract the police and allow the others to escape.
From here on out, the sequence from the beginning of the game plays out. Only this time we have more context about what is happening. The mysterious voice Joker keeps on hearing is Futaba. She is guiding him out of the Casino without getting caught. The palace is not collapsing, probably because the treasure is not stolen. Joker makes his way out of the Casino and when it looks like he is home free, the police lights turn on. He has been caught. There are some real hard to watch police brutality scenes here. These weren’t too fun to watch when the game came out, but after Floyd any scene of police brutality seems all too real.
Joker is taken into custody and there is more torture waiting for him in the interrogation room. It really does not look like Joker is going to be leaving this place alive. Again, this made very little sense the first time I was playing. But now that I know the connections the next boss has, this kind of treatment is more plausible, and all the more scary. Joker is already labelled a delinquent. Even his parents are not too interested in keeping him around. No one will bat an eye if he dies and the police just declare he died trying to escape. He has already been branded a leader of a terrorist group. There is not one soul who will stand up for him.
05-19-2020
