FL Plays the Persona Series

[Forsaken Lover]

So I'm replaying Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Been involved in so many Person arguments lately and it just kind of inspired me. Unlike P5 which I feel I fully understood and just saw zero appeal, P2 is a game whose appeal I think is there but I just need to make another attempt to find it. Without frequently wandering off at various points and leaving the game sit for months, and also armed with some foreknowledge of what will happen later in the game, maybe things will be more interesting.

Note: I wrote this periodically over the course of a week as I played through the game. If you don't want to read through a load of random thoughts that have been mildly edited by me, just know that my decision to give IS another go was a good one. I now consider it the second best Persona game after 4. But I'll mark my overall thoughts at the end. In the meantime, maybe you'll enjoy reading the random thoughts of someone on the Internet.

Also there are some questions I have about the plot that I need clarification on.

1. Evil Principals are bad and dumb P4 often gets blasted for being simplistic yet it's the only Persona where the teachers and school faculty are all pretty great and not a single criminal in their midst.

1 Edit: The Principal running as a Nazi punching good guy makes this criticism moot. Go Persona 2.

2. So I always thought Lisa's "bye bye!" in battle was...bye bye, as in the English words. There is plenty of gratuitous English in this game. ("Nice-uh shot-uh!") but whaddya know, it's just more of her Cantonese. It's "baaibaai" which literally means the same thing as English's "bye bye." This game is educational.


3. Arsonist from ten years ago huh? Makes Maya clutch at her arm, huh? This game has the subtlety of that hammer that Tatsuya pulls from nowhere to break the clocks but hey, it's this kind of thing that made me think about replaying the game. I had no idea some random NPC name drops Tatsuya Sudo in the first dungeon. Also, to be fair, no Persona game in my experience has ever had any ability to be s subtle.

In a similar vain, a teacher mentions Lisa has the lowest English grades. Also you can run into Jun's mom at some location. Which I forget but the point is, this run, I made sure to stop by at practically every location after a story event to talk with party members and NPC's. I always wondered about this lady because she has a portrait and looks very distinctive and Shadow Maya was fixated on her. The fact she turned out to be Queen Aquarius and that's where she went was very satisfying. There's a lot of stuff like that in this game.


Also one of the best reason to visit all the bajillion stores is to listen to the music.


4. The Saga of the Trans Character Known as Weird Lady

Also there appears to be a trans character in one of the stores, named "Weird Lady" who maybe asked the Joker to make her a man because she was tired of being called butch. I'm not sure if that's progressive or not....

So the saga of Trans Weird Lady has gone from wanting to be a man to proving her manhood (literally) to various people to saying she became a man because being a woman was too hard as she constantly had to reject guys who asked her out, to being a Masquerade Member who wants to see things blow up. Huh. Character development?

5. Bootstraps Are Dumb

I reiterate my earlier position that P2's bootstraps bulltrout is not in any way good. "YOU GOTTA TRUST YOUR FRIENDS!" I mean, who WOULDN'T stand by and watch a "friend" get beaten down by four people while some maniac holds a girl hostage? Not doing anything is the mark of TRUE friendship!

Although, I didn't interfere. Not because I care about Eikichi's pride, more that I just don't care about Eikichi at all. Best thing he'll ever do for me is get the upgraded Persona 20 hours from now.

Now, as for Lisa's "Save Or Let Her Be" moment, it's a bit less clear-cut than Michelle's. The problem is the game presents the choice in a very biased light. They want you to think "will Lisa betray you to the Joker or not?" As such, standing by and watching means you trust her. She won't give into temptation because she cares about you all too much. HOWEVER we have already establishes Sasaki has a Persona and is in league with the Masquerade. Furthermore, the choices as written are: "Let's watch what happens" and "Let's go save her." Now, saving implies she's in dire danger. Given that she's alone with another Persona user who is on the bad guy's side, it's obvious what danger she is in. Also maybe this is just me but "let's watch what happens" sounds really wrong. You don't just watch when people you care about are in danger.

I'm actually really torn on this. I thought it be easy, I'd just go save her and that be the end of it. And of course I can't deny the gameplay element. I know saving her screws me out of a new Persona. The game is bribing me to "just watch." Oddly, this is making the opposite happen. I feel like it's buying me which is pushing me towards the other choice because my integrity and love for Lisa is worth more than that. And with the writing of that last sentence, I've made up my mind to save her.

Also en route to save Lisa an NPC said Sasaki is a predator. Well, that dispels any doubts or second thoughts I had.

6. Superheroes But Only In Other Worlds

You know, something that P3 and onward do is draw a sharp contrast between the normal kids in the regular world and the Persona-wielding superheroes in the various other worlds. But here, Eikichi mentions he used his Persona to beat up people and we see Persona-enhanced strength multiple times throughout the game. Do the Persona powers just not work the same in P4 or 5 at least? There might have been actual dialogue on this but I always got the feeling that the Investigation Team and Phantom Thieves were powerless most of the time. They couldn't just whip out their Personas and kick ass any old time they wished.

7. Everyone In Persona 2 Is smurfing Insane

One thing that always bugged me is that everyone in this game acts really weirdly. Not anime weird, just tweird. Like, Lisa's friends. "We just randomly became idols! Lisa, why aren't you joining in!"? Is everyone in the town supposed to be going insane because of the rumors or the Joker or what? It just bugs the hell ot of me that the only characters who act even vaguely normal are the main characters. And I guess maybe Tatsuya's brother. But every NPC you run into is just really smurfing strange. However I won't deny that, by the end, I kinda loved this crazy little town. Only Inaba was better characterized.


8. Gameplay Talk

You know, it's weird how Fusion Spells are both fun and absolutely terrible. Learning them is both obvious and not obvious. Take for instance the fact I just learned Stone Raise which is Fire > Earth > Wind. Literally the last fight I tried Earth > Wind > Fire just because I was hoping someone who made P2 had heard of the band. It's fun when you just stumble upon a new technique like that but it's also really dumb. Same with Persona Mutations. Okay so certain Fusion Spells make certain Personas evolve? You just have to have pure luck and stumble upon it.

Also I spent hours playing Blackjack so I could get the Orb thingy that lets you Analyze unknown Fusion Spells. It's...not as helpful as I thought. I am learning, though. For instance, I always thought Fusion Spells were just generic magic type + generic magic type. However I have learned some require a specific skill. Like Maya just learned Summon Spirit. Summon Spirit + Wind = Fusion Spell. This only makes the chances of actually learning most Fusion Spells even slimmer, though.

After finally getting Jun I had accumulated over a 1,000,000 Yen so I went and blew all of it getting 10,000 Coins so I could summon Charon.

Also I never in the entire game got a Priestess, Emperor, Empress or Justice card. That seems weird. I guess I suck but you really don't need any of those. For my endgame team I had Beezleboob for Eikichi, Tsukuyomi for Tatsuya, Isis for Jun and just their regular ultimates for Maya and Lisa. I had Charon and some other Persona too there just because why not. I had a Tretraja Card I found and had some other Perrsona learn so I could keep us safe from Hama/Mudo spammers.

I heard Eternal Punishment is a lot harder so I guess I better get good.

I managed to get a Persona with skills to stop random encounters and always escape from battles. I didn't have those last playthrough. These skills helped my second run's enjoyment considerably.

9. Law for Life, Yo


"Simply being given what you want is not real happiness!"


Yuck. Stop spouting Neutral gibberish, Lisa..


10. Maya Reminds Me of Shion Uzuki from Xenosaga

But that statement you can make to Maya, and everything else about her really, is making me think of Shion Uzuki from Xenosaga.


"Shion, who saw the death of her parents at a very young age and saw the death of a loved-one a few years ago, felt that her own life was always right next-door to death. Therefore, she came to possess the view of life&death where life, which "does not go beyond the state of not being dead", places a leg in death. However one wishes for life, death visits like an unavoidable fate. No matter how deeply one wished to escape death, no matter how deeply those around him also wanted not to die, death mercilessly visits.

Based on experience, the dark feeling of the nothingness of death was controlling Shion's life. Because of that very thing, as if turning her eyes away from death, Shion immersed herself in work to an abnormal degree. By turning her eyes away from death and hiding her head in the work that was before her eyes, she was able to forget the feeling of nothingness. It came to be that it gives her strength in a realistic meaning. Her blindly optimistic speech and conduct is something that stemmed from her feeling of nothingness. "

That last part especially really invokes Maya in my view.

10 Edit: Upon completing the game, Maya is substantially more well-adjusted than Shion and probably isn't just hiding her deep-seated neuroses behind a pleasant face. Although she, like Shion, did more or less follow her father's line of work and were probably unhealthily obsessed with that work.

11. .The Problem is Choice

I have no idea what effect some of my choices had on the game. Like, what happens if you ignore the obvious bomb targets and go somewhere else? Also I left Yukino with Fuji because that's the right thing to do. Let her mourn. I have no idea if this effects anything, I also said Lisa was my love because she is. She always be my bae.

Way back before I even played P2 somebody told me to be nice to Maya. I'm right after the room with the memory of her father and the options are "it's alright to cry" and "suck it up!" Earlier when she was freaking out because of the fire you could gently calm her down or slap her. Like, I really do car about Maya but even if i didn't, I wouldn't play some kind of monster who uses "tough love" at the least appropriate times possible. The fact there are even these options to trout on Maya make me curious about what would happen if you do that.


12. Nobody Likes Yukino?

Was listening to great P2 music on YT and someone commented that Yukino is never included in P2 fanart. Not that I was ever a huge fan of hers but she was actually in the group for most of the game .Jun is like that little girl who replaces Galuf in Final Fantasy V, right down to magically getting the departed character's powers. How the hell does tha teven work for Personas?!

12 Edit: Jun comes into his own in the final dungeon but is still by far the weakest character due to his extremely late addition.

13.. Rebellious Teenage Girls

But what's this about Lisa having sex with old guys and doing hard drugs? Nanako's "birthday" just happened and some people were talking about her coming back as a playable character in a future Persona. I jokingly said she smokes and gets a nose piercing because a teenage girl is gonna be crazy rebellious against a policeman father. Then I said that was maybe just an American stereotype. But this stuff Shadow Lisa said makes it sound like it might very well be a stereotype everywhere....

Also I don't hold it against Lisa at all, it just came out of left field.

14. Eikichi Is...Good?!

So Eikichi's dungeon sucked but the conclusion was way better than Lisa's. Like, it was literally perfect. I've never been a huge fan of the character but that ending was good storytelling and a very satisfying conclusion to his character. Really, the fact I have never been overly fond of him makes that ending stand out even more as good writing. It bugged me how he treated Miyabi way way earlier and I've been wondering where the hell she went to so this was just everything I could have wanted.

14 Edit: Eikichi and Lisa are totally the prototype for Junpei/Yukari or Yosuke/Chie, right down to the constant physical abuse. They pack that in the shrines and Xibalba. Lisa hits him about five times in those dungeons which means they packed all that into the last...5 hours of thee game or so. It's weird. Although Eikichi dodging it after you beat his dad is amazing.


Ending Thoughts:

So I can't remember how or when but I learned Maya died a while back. Also some people spoiled me on Nya being behind everything. Then again, that was part my own fault for expressing no interest in finishing this game. They had no reason to hold back giving me this information. Also in all the Persona arguments I've been embroiled in lately, the ending of P2 came up a lot. The result is I wasn't exactly blown away or that interested. The journey was a lot more fascinating than its destination, basically. I did lose my first time against Nya because he randomly killed most of my party and then Charmed the other person so... Otherwise the fight isn't that hard. Or maybe I was overleveled.

All that being said, and I intend to start playing EP later today(probably after posting this in fact), I'm not sure where the whole "P2 spits in the face of "the Power of Friendship solves everything" idea came from. Sure Maya died and her friends couldn't stop it but the ending shows that they all got back together even when they forgot everything.

Also was that ever actually Hitler or was it just Nya in disguise?


Favorites:

Favorite Protagonist: Lisa Silverman or Maya Amano.

It's one of these two fine ladies, not sure which. Lisa is of course always there for you right from the start. Her problems are pretty easy to relate to. I especially like how her relationship with her father matures which is, again, one of those things you only notice if you go out of your way to see it. Kind of annoying but that's how this game was designed. As for Maya, as the co-lead of this game (some argue she's the real main character and Tatsuya is sort of the Vaan of P2) she's charming, spunky and I was profoundly interested in where her relationship with her father was going. You get hints of this all the way at the start of the game with the Demon Negotiation option she has. But it's not really brought up or discussed until way later, like dozens of hours later. And even then it only really gets one scene. I still found it powerful. It helps her theme song is perfect no matter the mood they are going for. But yeah, even more than Lisa, Maya was the person I always wanted to protect.

Favorite Antagonist: King Leo/Tatsuya Sudo

Some people have said the Crawling Chaos is their fave Persona villainb ut I don't get it. He's basically Zemus. Who the hell likes Zemus? I don't care if he was teh root behind it all, he is in, at most, a handful of scenes and is never talked about other than that.

I like Sudo because he has presence in the story.

Maki: [about King Leo] It's a violent, wicked resonation unlike anything I've ever felt before. That power brings only misfortune, and it will consume as many lives as it can..."

He puts the fear of God into Maya, he jerks the heroes around for three dungeons, and he has a great sense of trolling. You get these two fancy riddles and our heroes are like "what could the next puzzle be?! What cryptic message has he left for us this time!!!!?" And it just says "I'm at the Sky Museum. Signed, King Leo."

Plus, there's a lot more to him than I initially realized when I first played the game. although I liked him even then. You just have to talk to Professor Ideal for the details as well as visit every goddammed shop to get random dialogue.


After the meeting with Ideal in the Kuzunoha Agency, Yukino will say in Rosa Candida:

"King is one of the people who's trying to make In Laqetti become reality, right? Is King the one who brought the book into the Masquerade...? Why would he do that...?"

And in Time Castle she says

"Everything that King was talking about was written in In Laqetti. It's almost as if his actions were motivated by what was written there from the very start."

Eikichi in French restaurant:

"So that In Laqetti book started out because of the voices that King heard?"

They also discuss King hearing voices in that same shop earlier on, after the Smile Hirasaka bevent.

Basically it seems to me that Sudo went insane and tried to validate his insanity. Ever heard the defense of "I'm not crazy, YOU'RE ALL THE ONES WHO ARE CRAZY!"? Well, in this "rumors become reality" world, that actually can work. Alls his delusions become fact and he's no longer the twisted and abused victim that he once was. Or so my reading of his psychology goes.

Also, related topic: They always treat her like a joke but is Professor Ideal a villain? She worked with Sudo, a guy whose only other activities seem to be burning trout, blowing trout up and being imprisoned or tortured. She called him the "channeler" presumably referring to the fact he heard voices. She interpreted those voices as aliens or Maiyans or something and wrote this book. Basically, she took advantage of a mentally unhealthy kid. Plus it's all her fault this Hitler bulltrout got started.

Same goes for Jun's father. They were both grown adults, teachers no less, who enabled a mentally damaged and physically abused child instead of, I dunno, getting him to some therapy?

My Top 10 Innocent Sin Songs:

Main Theme A Basically the "everything will be alright as long as we have each other" theme. It represents a lot of what I love about this game and indeed all of Persona.

"In Rakeshi" Nobody can agree how to spell this damned word. But seriously guys, I gotta warn you about these aliens. There was this one named Nyx who came to Earth and brought death and...I'M NOT CRAZY I TELL YA!

"Knights of the Holy Lance" This game DESPERATELY needed more than one boss theme, as evidenced by this being one of the best and most memorable tracks in the game. Still not sure why the lady Nazi you fight with Yukino says "Heil Sigfried!" but whatever. Song is awesome.

"Final Boss Theme" As I was saying, different boss music = very good and welcome. It also helps this is very fitting and intense. It blends notes of intimidating and inspiration and it really works.

Lisa's Theme How could she NOT be my favorite with a theme like this? From the moment she's introduced with this playing, it was love.

"Small Mountain" A really good theme considering it was one of the most boring areas in the game and with this game's dungeons, that's saying a lot. Still, it's very inspirational and gets me pumped to go save Fuji from the Nazis.

Maya Amano, Master of Vehicles This needed to be played more and also someone needs to put up a 10 hour mix on YT.

"GOLD"Say what you will about P2's dungeons (they're actually worse than Tartarus or P4's dungeons as far as I'm concerned) but they all have great music.

"Palace of the Golden Bull" Although I think Lisa's Shrine is the only one with a really memorable song. It's so emotional and haunting and I'm glad I started with her place.


"Kuzunoha Detective Agency This song is way too smurfin' good. I also really liked Tamaki and Tadashi. Best side characters in the game.