Persona Qsday: Week 1 (Contains Persona Q Spoilers!) · 6:29am Sep 15th, 2015
Now exploring Atlus' cheerfully chibi crossover game, Persona Q!
The very nature of this game means there are spoilers for Persona 3 and Persona 4. I will try to keep the spoilers for these games to a bare minimum. However, ONLY PLOT EVENTS WILL BE SPOILER TAGGED. Not character names. Be warned!
For my first playthrough, I've chosen to use the Automap function; I'll leave the full manual mapping to my second playthrough and Etrian Odyssey.
Let's get the basics out of the way:
Persona Q is a crossover between Persona 3, Persona 4, and Atlus' Etrian Odyssey dungeon-crawler series. As opposed to the normal Persona games, which consist of progressing through the daily life of your protagonist and building Social Links as you explore secret dungeons and fight Shadows, in Persona Q you're exploring a dungeon with a fixed layout that you have to map on the touchscreen as you explore, fight Shadows, avoid roaming FOEs, and solve a mystery that brings the casts of two Persona games together. You can play through the story as the P4 protagonist or the P3 protagonist. So at minimum, you'll play through this game twice.
I chose to play as the P4 protagonist my first time through.
Unfortunately, due to space limitations on names (six characters each for first and last), I can't use the names I used in P3 and P4. Since being creative in naming within such a strict restriction is a pain, I went with the following names:
P3 Protagonist: Minato Sangou
P4 Protagonist: Yu Yongou
I'm playing on Normal difficulty.
Let's start!
===PERSONA Q===
===THE PERSONA 4 PLAYTHROUGH===
Our story begins on the morning of the last day of Yasogami High's cultural festival. Yu and his young cousin Nanako are eating breakfast when Kanji drops by to deliver some bentou.
The chibified character models in Persona Q, with their amazingly detailed faces, are the first awesome thing about this game (after its insanely cheerful and bright opening). I just love the character animations and detailed facial expressions!
Before leaving, Yu hears a mysterious bell tolling that nobody else seems to hear.
At school, after the beauty pageant, Yu and his friends meet up in Yu's classroom, where their group date cafe is completely dead. While talking, they all hear the bell. Yukiko starts spinning some really bullshit made-up urban legends that don't have anything to do with anything, aggravating Chie and the others. They decide to leave and look around.
In the hallway, Yu runs into Margaret, and is surprised to see her outside of the Velvet Room. He has to introduce her to his friends; they're familiar with his stories of the Velvet Room, and are surprised by her appearance. Margaret does not need any introductions from the rest of the group, knowing all too well who they are, and she has more pressing business anyway:
The mysterious bell is tolling in her fortune telling booth, which is essentially a compact, portable Velvet Room. Nothing happens in the Velvet Room without a reason, so Margaret is uneasy about what this bell portends.
The group decides to enter the fortune telling booth.
Inside the booth is a wide-open space full of turning gears, with two huge, chained-up doors. Margaret is as surprised as the rest to see this, because the original booth was a small room big enough for a desk and a chair.
The bell tolls again...
Outside, the hallways have become crowded and lively, and a clock tower has appeared outside the school! At Teddie's insistence, the group goes to check out a classroom that's supposed to be doing a Cosplay Cafe.
What they find instead is a strange sign over the door:
YOU IN WONDERLAND
Let's Alice!
Well okay then.
Inside the room, the gang finds a strange, labyrinthine space inside which Personas work and tons of Shadows are crawling around. Yu, Yukiko, Chie, and Teddie explore the strange labyrinth while Rise and Kanji provide support from outside and Naoto and Yosuke go off to investigate something else. After a brief preliminary exploration, they encounter two unfamiliar people: a boy with dark hair and scary eyes wearing a Yasogami uniform and a spiked dog collar, and a short, timid blond girl in a Yasogami uniform and a sweater. They introduce themselves as Zen and Rei, respectively, and follow the party back out into the halls of the school.
Upon regrouping with the others, we learn that there is no longer any way to leave the school. The school gate doesn't open, and the hole in the fence Kanji uses to duck the teachers doesn't even exist. Everyone's trapped inside...
Naoto calls everyone out to the schoolyard to examine the clock tower. It's a full-sized tower that looks like you should be able to enter it, but there doesn't seem to be a way in. Also, for whatever reason, the clock is moving extremely slowly. Zen and Rei know very little about it except that it's always been there and it moves very slowly. With no new clues to go on, the group returns to the Velvet Room to speak to Margaret.
Margaret complains about being dragged into a "mess", and explains that the place they are now in is a "haven in the rift", a place between reality and dreams, buried in the collective unconsciousness, similar to the TV world the party is familiar with--hence the presence of Shadows and the ability to use Personas. She tells the party, very vaguely, that "there is something you must accomplish here", and not doing so means never being able to return to reality.
Another strange thing we learn in the Velvet Room: Zen and Rei have no memory of anything before finding themselves in this "haven in the rift". They claim their memories have been taken by some unknown party.
Zen asks that he and Rei be allowed to accompany the party as they search for a way to escape. Once the decision has been made to work together, Rei...pulls a tray of takoyaki out from under her skirt, apparently.
Well alright then.
While the party tries to search for equipment and supplies for the upcoming battle, Rei...obsesses over food.
"Zen! Zen! Strawberries! They're like berries full of straw!"
Margaret agrees to become the party's armorer, general store, recovery inn, and warehouse. For a price, of course.
Once the party is rearranged, healed, and some equipment bought, it's time to go into the labyrinth!
NEXT TIME: What?! Mapping a dungeon?! Yu in Wonderland!
And now I'm wondering who they're going to die for...
In regards of normal, real-world knowledge, Rei can be even more clueless and hilarious than Elizabeth
(note, I've seen the first level on the P3 playthrough, but dropped it because the youtuber is a jackass)
...
Hahahaha!
Sounds like Persona, all right. Ridiculous as hell, awesome as hell. Have fun!
I haven't played it in awhile, I've been playing Animal Crossing New Leaf and Smash Brothers. I am also picking up the new Senran Kagura game today so it should be good.