My Epic Seven Nightmare Raid Teams (May 2024)

The last time I wrote about Epic Seven, I mentioned that my next goal was to focus on building teams for Nightmare Raid. Hell Raid was starting to feel a bit easy, plus I’m entering into late game territory and I no longer need good gear but rather great gear to take my main units to the next level. Apart from the Penetration set necklace and other top-tier gear in the Azmakalis dungeon shop, the bosses in Nightmare Raid also have a high chance of dropping really good level 88 gear, so that’s what I was after.

I managed to beat almost every boss last month (didn’t get good gear though), but I kept failing to beat the queen. Something always went wrong somehow, no matter what I did. Luckily, an easier strategy involving Challenger Dominiel and Ainz Ooal Gown came out recently. I wasn’t quite able to pull off a Phase Two one-shot, but I did enough damage to weaken her severely and FINALLY get the win. Full credit goes to the originator and refiner of this strategy. You guys are awesome!

It’s good for me to help others in turn, so I’m listing and screenshotting my Epic Seven Nightmare Raid teams here. It will also come in handy next time I take a break from the game, because I always forget who I used to do what, and unlike Expeditions, the game doesn’t record teams for future reference. Speaking of Expeditions, if I ever manage to full-auto all of them, I’ll post those teams too. Right now I can only beat Brutal Pherus (Fire) if I soul burn Choux at some point, and I hover around 1.0 to 1.2 million with the other ones.

Anyway, on to the teams. None of these are “auto” teams, by the way. Just FYI. Credit for all these builds and ideas go mainly to Tristen Wulf and Dad E7/Zoopido, also other YouTubers and Reddit posters whose names I don’t remember. I’m not smart enough to come up with any ideas by myself.

Queen Azumashik

Tamarinne

She’s my little cutie-pie! I wish she were a little faster, but you can’t have everything. You’ll need to watch the videos I mentioned above for the actual strategy because it’s a little fiddly. I’ve seen people beat the Nightmare Queen with other soul weavers like Lots and Destina, but IMO that’s like sawing wood with a butter knife. Just get Tamarinne and make your life easier.

Iseria

The standard Iseria I pair with Dark Corvus for Guild Wars shenanigans. I’m sure there are better artifacts I can run, like Bloodstone for extra heals, or Ms. Confille for better defense breaks, but I can’t be bothered. Her effectiveness for buff stripping the queen is the most important thing. If Queen Azumashik has her buffs up, she hits harder and takes less damage AND she transfers the buffs to her minions AND the minions counter attack if you attack the queen when she is buffed. You really need those buffs to come down.

Ainz Ooal Gown

Sasuga Ainz-sama! Any artifact or build will do, IMO. He just needs 100% crit and enough bulk to stay alive. If he dies, the whole operation falls apart because it’s his soulburned AOE S1 that enables Challenger Dominiel to hit big numbers. Watch the video for more details.

Challenger Dominiel

The legend. The phenom. I only thought of her as “that annoying girl in the Nixied dungeon” until this strategy came out. Give her as much attack and crit damage as possible. Only 50% crit chance is needed because of her S3, if I recall correctly. Ainz’s crits will boost her combat readiness, so zero speed is fine. A bit of bulk so she doesn’t get one-shot either.

The Kal’adra artifact is really important for getting enough damage too, unless you have a super cracked ChanDom. On a tangential note, I really like it when someone pulls a niche hero from somewhere for a crazy strategy in this game. That’s why I try to keep at least one copy of everyone, even the lamest-seeming 3-star.

June 2024 update: I’ve beaten the queen twice with this strategy now, so I can confidently say it works. But! In my case, I have to fight a few random battles first to get a full bar of souls. The strategy of dragging out the fight against the Queen until the bar fills up is too risky for me because both Ainz and ChanDom are kind of squishy. Also all is not lost if the queen hits 50% and pushes phase because you over-damaged her, as long as Tamarinne’s S3 and Iseria’s S3s are immediately ready or ready within a turn. Free everyone from paralysis, def break the queen ASAP and let her have it. It’s even better this way because it clears all the hatched minions and you just have to tank the bleeds for a turn to kill the queen.

Devourer Arakahan

Navy Captain Landy

Apologies, I just changed her equipment today to give her more HP and less crit damage, so I don’t know if she still works against Arakahan. I’ll test this build against the boss next month and let you know. If she doesn’t, replace the HP necklace with a Critical Hit Damage necklace and aim for around 3400 attack, 16,000 HP and 300+ critical hit damage. (update: Crit Damage neck is faster, but this also works)

I chose Navy Captain Landy to be my main damage dealer because the boss uses a lot of Stuns, which she is immune to. She’s also a PVE beast with both single hits and AOEs, plus she self-heals and she can stun the mobs and prevent them from hurting me or healing the boss. I love this character.

Suthan

He plays an important role in burning the enemies. You see, Devourer Arakahan’s mobs take much less damage unless you stack two or more of the same debuff/status effect on them. Bleeds and burns are the best choice, so you can use other characters like Carrot or your rift debuffers if you want. I like Suthan because he doesn’t need to build effectiveness (I’ll have to change that Hit set to Torrent later) and he has unhealable to stop the battle from dragging out forever.

Magic Scholar Doris

As you may know from Guild Wars, Doris has a passive that heals whenever she is attacked by a dark enemy. Also she’s cute. I like soul weavers. The Wondrous Potion Vial artifact helps cleanse that pesky stun from your characters too. I have one that is close to +30, but someone else is wearing it right now… Roana? I forget.

Seaside Bellona

Usually on Bloodstone for extra heals. I’m sure any other sub DPS would do, but I like how her passive heals me up while dealing good damage, and with Life Steal, she’s pretty self-sustaining. Now that I look at it, that crit damage is really bad… I’ll have to take a second look at it next time I log in (update: later raised it to 278% with 95% crit chance, which is the best I can do for now).

Executioner Karkanis

(Daddy) Brieg

Daddy Brieg, not just “Brieg,” you peasant. The dude completely transformed my Expedition game, and he’s pretty good against Executioner Karkanis because he can target Karkanis even in stealth when his focus S3 goes off. That’s huge. The defense break is nice too. I’ll try him on the Daydream Joker artifact next time.

Choux

Ignore that artifact up there. It is very important that you run +30 Daydream Joker on Choux or whoever your main DPS is, or you simply won’t do enough damage. I learned that the hard way. I like using Choux because Karkanis goes into Rage mode and attacks like crazy when his HP reaches like 30% (or 40%?). But if he’s defense broken and you have a lot of souls, you can soul burn Choux’s S1 and wipe him out without giving him a chance to fight back. I’m working on getting Choux another 2-3000 HP and more crit damage, but you know how Epic Seven is with gear.

Diene

Why does she look so suspicious of me, lol. I should have chosen another expression. Executioner Karkanis uses a LOT of debuffs, and if you hit him with a debuffed character, he cleanses his own debuffs and counterattacks, so you really need a lot of cleansing. Diene also helps with damage by giving an attack buff to the whole party.

Angelic Montmorancy

I played Epic Seven for many, many, many months before I got Tamarinne, and in all that time, Angelic Montmorancy carried my whole team on her shoulders. Even though she’s largely retired now, she’s still useful here because she’s the cleansing champion. Instead of Magahara, I’ll try giving her Wondrous Potion Vial next time (update: this was a great idea that made the run much faster). She would also benefit from like 30 more speed. In fact I should just exchange her gear with Diene’s or Hazel’s, since A. Momo doesn’t need HP to heal.

Secretary Vera

The team below doesn’t have a defense break, and you’ll need that to burst through the boss’s second phase before the egg pops and kills you all. I use Zeaon as a guardian and try to build up enough souls going into the egg phase to prevent it from becoming an issue. You can also fight one or two battles before warping to the boss if that makes it easier for you.

Fire Lilias

The key to victory in this fight, for me. I tried other fire knights and failed, though maaaaybe Adventurer Ras might work for someone, especially since he has defense break. Firstly, Fire Lilias has a full team cleanse on her S3, which helps a lot. Plus even with her poor damage stats, she does good damage to those pesky eggs because of the way her S3 works (scales off highest attack stat in the team), so imagine if I built her with more crit chance and and damage… I’ll try it once I have the gear.

More importantly, in the final phase of Secretary Vera, you need to use a lot of dual or extra attacks to make the boss take more damage. Lilias’ S1 always does a dual attack, so that’s a quick and easy way to satisfy the requirement. As I said, you can use A. Ras with his S2 instead, but you’ll need to save a lot of souls for the final stage.

Mascot Hazel

She’s mainly there for the attack buff to fire allies, which she does a great job with. I felt she wasn’t healing enough, probably because her HP is so low, so the Touch of Rekos artifact helps with that. I should really just give her better gear so I can run something like Guardian Ice Crystals or Idol’s Cheer instead.

Mercedes

Mercedes-chan the fluffy destroyer! Her powerful AOE attacks are handy for wiping out the eggs while hurting Vera. Her S2 also attacks twice when she has an attack buff up, which both her S3 and Mascot Hazel handily supply. That helps a lot in the final stage. Between the Counter set and her Magic for Friends artifacts, she is constantly attacking, so she helps the battle end faster. My dream is to give her over 4000 attack and 200 speed one day.

Cermia

I think any fire sub DPS will do, not necessarily Cermia. I just like Cermia because she hits HARD, doesn’t die easily because of Golden Rose, and will occasionally (nay, more than occasionally) attack twice if she has the Exclusive Equipment for it. I’m almost done building her, just want that 100% crit and like 15 more speed.

Juleeve Council

Destina

Bastion of Hope to boost her horrible effect resistance. Anything but build her with better gear, eh? Juleeve Council is my least favorite Raid boss because of the injury and all the poisons, but Destina helps a lot in cleansing them and CR pushing my attackers.

Laia

Apparently most people run a second Earth soul weaver like Roana or Ray in Laia’s slot, but I tried her and she worked great. Her S2 helps cleanse Juleeve’s pesky poison while lowering skill cooldowns, and her S1 triggers dual attacks which will pull in either Zahak or MG Lilias if you’re lucky. IMO the battle against Juleeve Council is a pure DPS race, so more dakka is better than sustain.

Zahak

Ignore the Symbol of Unity artifact. For this battle you want +30 Daydream Joker on both Zahak and Midnight Gala Lilias to do more damage. Other Earth DPS characters will do the job too, I’m sure. Vivian, Celine, Vildred, ae-Giselle if you have her.

Zahak is just preferred because he doesn’t have debuffs (Juleeve will cleanse, attack, and self-buff if you debuff him, the hateful thing) and his S2 cleanses poison while attack buffing and CR pushing. Even better, his S1 can be soul burned for 1 soul. You really need soul burned attacks in the last phase of the fight to remove Juleeve Council’s rage buff.

Midnight Gala Lilias

See the note about other Earth DPS above. Many people won’t have MG Lilias because she’s limited, but if you do, whoooo boy! Use +30 Daydream Joker and watch the fur fly. I wish I had 4000+ attack and 250+ speed on her like all the cool kids do, but honestly this build is more than enough for Juleeve Council.

And that’s it! Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions! I’ve tried all of these teams at least twice, except the Queen, so I know they work, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement!

Beat the “final boss” in Persona 5 Royal! Okay not really, but yeah (endgame spoilers)

By that I’m referring to Yaldabaoth or whatever he calls himself. The god of control that gave us the chance to recite the obligatory “mankind needs no gods” spiel before shooting him in the face with a bigger, badder god of our own. If I’ve learned anything from JRPGs, it’s that anything and everything is permissible as long as we’re the ones doing it. BTW, what IS it with Persona 5 Royal and shooting people in the face?

Anyway, I beat him and waited and waited for the credits to roll, but it turns out the game segues straight into the extra content added for Persona 5 Royal (versus vanilla Persona 5, which no one should buy), so I haven’t fully finished the game yet. That’s why I added “not really” in the title, because if Persona 3 FES is anything to go by, I still have another 15-20 hours and more tough dungeons and bosses to fight. The save file reads 82 hours IIRC. Where did the time go…

Notes on sort-of finishing the game but not really

The last boss fight

I changed the settings to Easy, paid a lot of money to fuse powerful personae and wiped him out in a few turns. Before shooting him in the face, of course. Highly recommended strategy, 10/10. I think this is going to be my preferred way of finishing games from now on. I’ve paid my dues.

Ending spoilers

As is traditional here, I will try to spoil the little sense I could make of the ending. It turns out that the Igor we know from the Velvet Room had actually been kidnapped/locked away by Yaldabaoth the god of control all along, and the twins Caroline and Justine were originally one entity that he split into two annoying little twerps. Yaldabaoth was running a game pitting Joker against Akechi for reasons and through means that I didn’t fully understand. However the game was rigged so that, regardless of who won, he would take over the world by merging it with Mementos by taking advantage of the human desire to relinquish control of one’s life to another. It kind of makes sense in context, kind of doesn’t, but it’s aight, I got the general picture. Shoot bad god in face, got it.

Morgana’s identity

Ah, BTW, Morgana’s true identity is… some kind of creature born from the remnants of human hope? that Igor cobbled together right before being kidnapped. His job was to help the Trickster/Joker win the game. In the end he pulls off a grand disappearance and then comes back as an ordinary (?) talking cat. AFAIK he wasn’t human to begin with but looked up to humanity because he was born from their desires. Being a cat is better, Mona, trust me on this one.

Akechi. Ugh.

Lessee, what else… Oh yeah, Akechi isn’t really dead because of Rule of Cool. I hate that so much, I really wanted him dead. I’ve been wanting him dead since he showed up in Shido’s Palace and the Phantom Thieves tried to talk-no-jutsu him back onto the straight and narrow. Naaah man, HE SHOT ME IN THE FACE! That’s a relationship dealbreaker if there ever was one.

But anyway, he shows up smug as ever and confesses to his crimes and nobody has any idea how they’re going to get the charges to stick when the Metaverse doesn’t even exist any more anyway. Luckily Shido has done plenty of other provable bad stuff—like framing Joker—so they’ll be able to put him away for something. It just galls me that Akechi is gonna get off scott free. Mona, if you have to be a human being, make sure it’s a smooth-talking prettyboy.

My thoughts about you are unprintable.

Relationships and other strange animals

I managed to finish most of the confidant routes I was interested in, except Hermit (Futaba). Hers is also the only one I feel would have made my game even easier if I had finished it, because her random skill that casts Concentrate/Charge on my party is seriously awesome, and I really wonder what else she had up her sleeve. Apart from her, I also finished Haru and Yusuke in my party, Sojiro, the doctor, the reporter lady, the fortune-teller, the gamer kid… Oh, and I got Hifumi Togo as a girlfriend.

Actually I initially wanted to make Haru Joker’s girlfriend (no, she gets no say in the matter) because who wouldn’t want a filthy rich girlfriend who grows steroids on a rooftop? Ultimately, though, I decided to keep work and romance separate (don’t 💩 where you eat, as they say). It would be too messy to start dating within the Phantom Thieves unless I could make all the ladies my harem, plus I like having a girlfriend none of those nosey parkers know about (“You wouldn’t know her. She goes to another school.”) The other ladies were kind of crazy to even want to date a high school boy (looking at you, Kawakami), and I kind of liked Hifumi, so that’s how she ended up dating Joker.

Unfortunately I wasn’t impressed by romance in this game. Maybe it’s because I’ve played so many otome games in the past, but I like to see a little bit of reciprocity in video game relationships. Joker’s facial expressions and physical actions were way too stiff and stoic to make dating life sweet. Hifumi would be blushing and saying all these mushy things and Joker would be like 😐😐😐. Even when he supposedly returns the sentiment and says stuff like “I’m happy I met you too,” his face in the game and his portrait on the side are still like 😐. 😐😐😐😐. Come on, guy. Smile! Blush! Let us feel the love tonight!

“I love you, too.” Do you, Joker? Do you really? What do I really mean to you? *sob sob*

Localization

I should say a few words about the localization too, which I thought was very good. Even with the honorifics left intact, there were very few places where I could feel the original Japanese text peeking through. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but you’ll know it when you see it: text that makes you go “Yeaaah… it’s not ungrammatical, but no one would actually talk like that in English.” At the same time, they didn’t go so far in localization that the Japanese voices were saying the complete opposite of what I was reading.

I read comments online that said P5‘s translation was bad, but either Atlus fixed a lot of the errors for Persona 5 Royal or I’m more forgiving when it comes to localization than I’d thought. I think it’s both, because I didn’t recognize any of the lines and screenshots those posts mentioned. My only problem was the untranslated videos and onscreen images like TV screens etc. They could have done much better with those, though I understand how it would be difficult.

Plus it’s definitely true that I’m soft on localized games. I almost never play the same game in both Japanese and English, and certainly not simultaneously, so I can’t compare JP to EN. That’s why it’s an issue I almost never blog about unless it’s noticeably bad or error-ridden. Have I played a game like that recently? Hmm, can’t remember…

Combat

What else… I haven’t talked about combat much, have I? Even after 88 hours, I’m still not sure I like the changes from the previous games. The bigger issue is the annoying gimmicky bosses, especially Okumura. Also the dungeon puzzles and gimmicks, rrghh. Especially Okumura’s! But I’ll save those comments for when the game is finally over and done with, or I won’t have anything left to write about.

See you guys for a final round up when I finally, finally beat the final, final, final boss!

Persona 5 Royal, 74 hours in – Okay they’re dumb, but not THAT dumb (late game spoilers)

Since my last post, I’ve been steadily plugging away at Persona 5 Royal and really enjoying the whole “actual game with a beginning and an end” thing. Unless the ending is dreadful, I’ll be quite sorry to see it go. In fact I’ve already added Persona 5 Strikers to my Nintendo wishlist, just waiting for a good sale.

I wanted to write more thoughts earlier, but didn’t get the time. It’s just as well I didn’t and waited a little longer for the Niijima Palace arc to play out, because the Phantom Thieves turned out to be smarter than I’d given them credit for. When the whole thing with Goro Akechi blackmailing/persuading them to let him join and then take on Niijima’s Palace was going on, I was really worried that their stupidity had gone too far. Like guys, guys! Don’t do it! This guy is fishier than the Atlantic Ocean, he’s obviously up to no good! Guuuys!

You look like a mosquito.

It was really getting my goat to see the Phantom Thieves adding him to their chat group, inviting him to their meetings and being all buddy-buddy with him like they didn’t suspect a thing. I was like “Really? Really, guys?!” If nothing else, when he insisted that the date of stealing the treasure had to be the 18th of November, I was like okay, you guys haaaave to smell a rat here or I’m done.

And to their credit, they more than smelled a rat but actually set up a clever mousetrap that allowed the Phantom Thieves to go off the radar and continue their activities in the shadows. They showed that they were suspicious of Akechi from the school festival (they even picked up on the “pancakes” comment that was eating me alive!), shared those suspicions with each other, and took concrete measures against him while acting dumb and playing nice with Akechi the whole time. I can’t help feeling that they would have avoided a lot of trouble by showing that level of smarts right from the start of the game, but then again they didn’t have Futaba and Makoto on the team back then.

Only this cretin who should have gotten us caught and killed long ago.

I’m not 100% clear on how the whole fake-out, fake death deal worked, but I got the general idea. Basically, since Niijima’s Palace was largely identical to the real world, they used Joker’s smartphone + Niijima + Akechi’s proximity to pull Akechi into a Palace that spoofed the interrogation room. There he met a fake Joker (who would be there because Niijima thinks he’s there and it’s her palace) and “killed” him… But somehow the body of the shadow did not disappear upon death… maybe because Niijima knew that Akechi would kill “Joker” and so a “dead” Joker was within her expectations? And somehow, nobody was responsible for transporting the body to the morgue, nobody ever checked the morgue or contacted Joker’s guardian, family or school about his death, or made arrangements for the burial etc. etc… Well, it all fits with the idea of Akechi and Shido being smug but not as smart as they think they are, so I’ll let it slide.

And now, having shaken off the stigma of being Phantom Thieves, at least temporarily, we have conveniently identified the big bad by tapping Akechi’s phone (he knows they have a hacker, but seriously didn’t expect a wiretap?) and now we’re going to take him down. I’m more excited by the prospect of getting a dungeon to explore than by anything else, since there has been a LOT of talking recently.

I was a little worried that all the drama and having to pretend to be dead would cause my social links to close, but I’d finished quite a number before November 20th, plus most of them meet outside school or at night anyway. The only one I’m concerned about is Haru, since I want to save her from the clutches of Sugiura (and also score those sweet, sweet vegetables) but if it’s over, then it’s over. I can always play P5R again in the distant future if I’m really interested in… in fact, no, I can just watch the other routes on YouTube.

Which brings me to the main thing annoying me about confidant routes: Mementos! It’s always about “so and so is bothering me, what can I doooo?” But instead of finding practical, real world solutions (like consulting the police if a couple is blackmailing you), we go into Mementos and change the bad guys’ hearts, basically just magicking the problem away, and then presto! Problem boringly solved.

We should rather change the hearts of idiotic teachers like these. Madam, please respect yourself.

I mean yeah, I’m not playing a magical phantom thief game for the realism, and yeah it would be nice if all problems could disappear that easily, but I don’t like such simplistic resolutions because they make the confidant routes boring and predictable.

Hifumi’s having problems with her mom = I’m going to change her mom’s heart, aren’t I? Same with the Tower kid and his mom, same with Iwai and his yakuza ex-buddy, and I’ve already been asked by Futaba to go change her uncle’s heart. I get that Atlus wanted Mementos to be more than an afterthought, but then they could have integrated it better with the rest of the game, for example by giving better rewards and more interesting layouts so players want to get in there and explore. Ruining confidant routes is not the way.

No, no, no, that’s not how the parable of the talents went.

Another thing kiiinda bothering me but not really is how little presence the personas have in the game. I say it’s “kinda” bothering me because I came to Persona 5 Royal from Shin Megami Tensei V where your demons are your party members and they’re all over the map, giving quests, fighting each other, making comments, being heavily involved with the story, etc. In P5R they’re largely interchangeable with each other in terms of roles, personalities and combat abilities. You can easily give them all kinds of skills without worrying about elemental affinity, so there’s no need to stick to any one shadow and try to level it up to get all of its skills. They’re personas without personalities, if I may be clever for a moment. As someone who enjoys the Pokemon aspect of Persona/SMT games, having them be so bland is a bit saddening but well, it is what it is.

I have a few other things on my mind about P5R, mostly positive, but since I’m close to the end of the story (I think?) I might as well finish and save all my comments for then. See ya!

Persona 5 Royal – 44 hours in, tons of fun! (mid-game spoilers)

Just learned how to transfer Switch screenshots without taking the SD card out, so I can go crazy now!

I’d forgotten how much fun it can be to play a JRPG with an actual start and finish. Persona 5 Royal‘s story is still immature, bordering on the ridiculous, but I keep reminding myself that they’re just kids and then it becomes slightly bearable.

For example even a toddler knows better than to get into a stranger’s car, but nooo, a supposedly smart honor student just runs up to gangsters and demands to be taken to their boss. Doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going or who she’s going to see, just runs into an alley with people who are known to be pimps, drug dealers and extortionists. Normally this would be a good way to end up trafficked or in a shallow grave somewhere, but this is a video game so everything works out just great in the end.

I guess she would make decent fertilizer…

But she’s just a kid. If anything, it’s sheltered people who have grown up without danger who tend to be most vulnerable to doing dumb stuff, because they lack the street smarts, and everything has always gone their way all their lives so they don’t have any real concept of danger. …Actually, I just remembered some of ill-advised stuff I did when I was even older than her, so I can’t talk too much.

Current stage: For anyone who’s played it before, I’m currently playing the summer holidays in August. Just finished the tomb dungeon, now waiting for Futaba to take her sweet, sweet time waking up. Right now I’m in Mementos finishing up some quests so I can continue the Death social link, plus doing some other requests as well.

I would enjoy Mementos even more if I were free to go to a much greater depth, like in that dungeon in Stella Deus, for example. Having progress tied to my story progression means the enemies in any area I’m allowed to access are way too weak to make the dungeon interesting, so I don’t usually bother with Mementos. It wasn’t so bad in Persona 3 and 4 because progressing in the dungeon was the story, but here you have the Palace and then you have Mementos as its own thing, and the latter doesn’t really work for me.

That would be the smart thing to do, but I already told you this game doesn’t run on common sense.

Apart from that, I’m having a lot of fun focusing more on the visual novel aspects than the dungeons. Also constantly feeling like “Dammit Morgana, you’re not my mom! Let me go out at night!” I wish he wasn’t so cute so I could hate him more. I finish all the Palaces in two sessions if possible – one for reaching the treasure and the other for the boss fight, unless the game requires me to leave and return for some reason. That leaves more time for hanging out with “confidants,” which is what I play Persona for anyway. It would totally be a Majin-like if the dungeons weren’t so long.

Favorite social link so far: Sojiro Sakura, the old guy I live with. I like how he went from curt and brusque to “You ain’t half-bad, kid.” Like, it was clear he had a heart of gold because he wouldn’t have taken Joker in otherwise, but it’s still nice to see him soften up like that.

I also like Kawakami’s link because of the mind-boggling stupidity of taking a job like that in the same town as your students and their families. The other teachers seem more or less normal, but between her poor decision-making and her horrible attitude to Joker at first, Ms. Kawakami deserves to lose her license. Who am I kidding though, bad teachers keep teaching forever. At best they just get transferred elsewhere.

There’s no “Queen Salome” in the Bible, ma’am. You’re confusing the one who supposedly did exist (but is not mentioned in the Bible) with the femme fatale who was not a queen. And if anything it’s her mother who was the femme fatale.

Least favorite links: Not exactly a link but any situation where all of the Phantom Thieves are together in the real world, because they just won’t stop talking about their activities in very public places, e.g. Ryuji talking about their activities in a very crowded convenience store. Since they had the common sense to use pseudonymns in the Palaces, why not give it a boring nickname like the “Research Club” so they can talk about it all they want? Or does that make too much sense?

For actual confidants, it kind of bugs me that no one noticed that Akechi could hear Morgana, so I feel a bit irritated every time I see him. He’s also a smug little rotter, isn’t he? I can’t wait for the inevitable boss fight so I can punch his face in. The reporter lady Ichiko Ohya is also annoying and pretty useless so far. I don’t care what happened with your partner, stop making a teenager meet you in a bar at night!

What’s next: More Persona 5 Royal! When I get the time, that is, because there’s an Overlord collab coming up in Epic Seven. I’m not a super big fan of Overlord, it’s just aight, but I’ve gotta have those collab units, and I need to grind lots and lots for the epic gear crafting events, plus refresh the shop tons to get more of Albedo and Shalltear’s artifacts. That’s another advantage (and also disadvantage) of regular JRPGs: there’s no FOMO so I can take my sweet time coming back to it. But I really am enjoying P5R, so I’m sure it won’t be too long before I’m back in the saddle. See you then!

15 hours into Persona 5 Royal – Really feeling my age (spoilers)

15 hours of gameplay should be enough for an initial post. Though it’s more like 5 hours of the dungeon and 10 hours of visual novel hijinks, but the dungeon was really boring so I’m cool not having too much of it. I’ve finished the first, overly-long Kamoshida arc, now I’m into the second, also sure to be over-long Madarame saga.

Along the way I’ve had to remind myself over and over again that the protagonists are just kids. They’re just kids. They’re just kids. If I don’t keep repeating that to myself, it will be just too frustrating because there’s a lot of things I just wouldn’t do if I were in their position – at my age right now. As a dumb 17 year-old, yeah, it sounds about right, but as a [ahem! ahem!] year-old, I’m more into “keeping my head down and getting on with my life” no matter where I go.

1) I wouldn’t get involved with any of this Kamoshida business to begin with. I already got into trouble once for meddling. I’d just serve my time quietly for a year and skedaddle. Especially the moment I was told the Principal, teachers and parents were all aware and kept their mouths shut for the sake of results, that would have been my cue to butt out and stay out. Those days of joining an organization and immediately trying to reform their culture are well over [ahem ahem!] years behind me.

2) I definitely wouldn’t hang out with that Ryuji kid. He’s an idiot. Always running about, mouthing off with to the wrong people, taking decisions for me, making uncontrolled outbursts left and right with all the discretion and common sense of a monkey at the zoo… I think he was supposed to be the “lovable idiot” type but they forgot the “lovable” part. In fact, as a general principle it’s best to avoid the kind of loser who latches on to newbies in organizations and is full of complaints about this and that. Eventually you’ll find out why they are shunned by their peers, hopefully before you burn too many bridges.

3) Once the whole Kamoshida saga was over, that would have been the end of my adventures as a “Phantom Thief.” If Mishima wants to create his little website, that’s his problem. If Ryuji wants people to know we’re real (why???), that’s his problem as well. I’ll deny everything to the end. I mean for story reasons we have to keep doing this whole thief and Palace thing, so I’m just talking in hypotheticals here. This whole thing is just too shady, better to read some books, watch some DVDs, and chill in the coffee shop until the school year ends than risk my life and reputation for stuff that doesn’t concern me.

4) No way in hell am I going to out of my way to save a creep that tried to blackmail a girl into posing nude for him. Being an abused orphan does not give you the right to become a lech. That’s criminal. Any sympathy I had for him went out of the window like whooosh. In fact, I wouldn’t talk to a stalker like that to begin with, or go to his art exhibition, or go to his house… And since I’m looking for dirt on Madarame, I would certainly have an audio recording going so I could capture both his confession of Madarame’s plagiarism and his threats. These Phantom Thieves are just too naive. They’re just kids… they’re just kids…

Actually the far more bizarre detail is how no one has realized over all these years that Madarame’s works are all drawn by different people. An artist can’t get that famous without his works being studied over and over again by art experts, who would spot the differences in style from all kinds of things like the depth of the brush strokes and what have you (I’m not an art critic but it sounds plausible, right?). He miiight have gotten away with it for one apprentice with a very similar style, but dozens of apprentices over the years? How stupid is the art world in this game anyway?

Honestly it’s only a matter of time before Madarame comes crashing down in a blaze of common sense, so I would just give Nakanohara the reporter’s number and stay well out of it.

But no, Persona 5 Royal doesn’t work by common sense, so I’ve been tossed into the second Palace in this game to take down Madarame because otherwise Ann will have to pose nude? Except she really won’t because she really never has to talk to that guy again? His threat to call the police is an empty one when it’s your word against his, and seriously, you can just talk to the shady counselor at school to get things sorted out. Shujin Academy is in a bad place right now and the last thing they need is more publicity. They’ll definitely help us make this thing go away… and there I go thinking like a rational adult again.

Okay, back to the game. The stealth mechanic isn’t as annoying as I’d thought it would be, and I’m happy to finally get to collect Personas again. Time to steal some treasure!