Persona Qsday: Week 4 (Contains Persona Q Spoilers!) · 12:11pm Oct 6th, 2015
We're back with week four of my Persona Q coverage!
Remember, only plot spoilers from P3/P4 will be tagged! Character names from both games and plot details specific to Persona Q will NOT be tagged. Proceed at your own risk.
When last we left off, Yu and his friends were still exploring the third floor of the labyrinth, and ran into...difficulties. So close to the floor exit, and yet so far away...
Let's plunge back in!
YOU IN WONDERLAND
Chapter 3
Considering what happened previously, I'm being a lot more cautious and conservative from now on. It's better to bank small amounts of progress than lose massive chunks of it.
I also realized, going back in, that my observation skills are not as sharp as they could be: I had failed to open some two-way clock passages by not noticing the green arrows meant it was a two-way passage once you went through it. Derp. Fortunately, this meant I was able to open an easy path to the suckiest part of the floor.
I won't lie: I derped HARD in the final room with the three FOEs. I ended up going to GameFAQs and looking up the solution...only to massively facepalm when I realized I had already figured it out on my own, but had effectively outsmarted myself by thinking the FOE on the back side of the room would attack me while I was watering the third rose vase.
Yes, I am dumb.
Anyway, once I got past the three FOEs, I got the "unreachable" treasure chest, opened up the last two passages, then backtracked for the 100% Yay! chest (containing a skill card for Media), then I proceeded to...
YOU IN WONDERLAND
End
As the party arrives in the final chapter of You in Wonderland, the atmosphere becomes daunting and oppressive. The rabbit sits before them, waiting...
...and then abruptly vanishes.
Continuing on, the party finds an ominous door, behind which awaits something powerful and dangerous...
The boss of the labyrinth, the Queen of Hearts, who is jealously protecting a treasure chest. The Queen deploys a horde of weaker Card Soldiers to attack the party...
They're easy to kill, but it doesn't matter, because this is one of those unwinnable "wave after wave" fights that ends after two victories.
As the party is lamenting the hopelessness of the battle (that they keep winning in one turn and Boosting every single time), and Naoto suggests retreating to regroup and recover:
Mysterious Voice: "You should rest. We'll take these on!"
Yu-tachi of course do not recognize this voice, but we, the players, DO:
It's Mitsuru Kirijo.
Yes, folks...SEES has arrived!
To the tune of "Mass Destruction"!
Minato, Mitsuru, Ken, and Yukari join Yu in battle against the Card Soldiers. Their lack of multi-target skills actually makes the "winnable" phase of the battle take longer, but not by much. Naoto recognizes the newcomers' uniforms as belonging to Gekkoukan High.
After the Card Soldiers are wiped out, the enraged Queen attacks!
After a long and difficult battle, Yu and his friends defeat the Queen.
The SEES members introduce themselves as Persona users, and Elizabeth and Theodore introduce themselves as well. Minato suggests leaving the labyrinth before talking further, and Yu agrees, but Zen has one thing he wants to do first:
Open the Queen's treasure chest.
He does so, and inside he finds...a stuffed rabbit doll.
The rabbit jogs Zen's memories...sort of. He remembers that there are four labyrinths, each with a guardian that's protecting something. He has something he needs to do here, but he can't remember...
While the party is discussing memories, labyrinths, guardians, and the Shadows that are clearly keeping everyone trapped, the bell tolls again...and one of the locks on the doors in the Velvet Room comes off.
The group leaves the labyrinth and regroups in the hall. The P3 gang introduces themselves. Long cutscene is long. Margaret has some stuff to say too. Long cutscene is even longer.
Margaret hands over the equipment store to Theo and the Nurse's Office to Elizabeth. Liz also starts assigning quests...and changes into a pink-and-white nurse version of her Velvet Room uniform. Oh, Elizabeth... 
Long cutscene is EVEN LONGER...
In the end, there are over 30 minutes of cutscenes between the Queen battle and the point where you have freedom to save and do stuff again. 
That's my biggest complaint about Atlus RPGs: Cutscene fatigue.
I like cutscenes. I love cutscenes. Cutscenes are important in console RPGs.
And even in handheld RPGs.
But see...
Atlus loves shoving ridiculously long cutscenes down your throat, to the point of exhaustion.
It's bad enough when Atlus' console games have 30-50 minute cutscenes.
30 minute cutscenes in a portable handheld game without a pause-and-save thing? UGH.
Even worse is when immediately after the cutscene, they shove a bunch of new gameplay information up your ass all at once when all you want to do is save, turn off the 3DS, and rest for a bit. Hello! I just sat through thirty minutes of cutscenes which weren't as fun as they should have been because I got tired watching them, and now you're throwing all this other shit at me without giving me time to breathe? 
But I digress.
So anyway, now I have access to the full party roster of both Persona 3 and 4, with nowhere near enough money to equip them all (gah), as well as the ability to stroll around the school enjoying the culture festival and the ability to take requests from Nurse Lizzy.
Interlude
A few things to do here before moving on. First up is the first request, wherein you have to help Zen beat Teddie in a "trading challenge" to find an item Rei will like better than what Teddie finds for her.
It's a pretty funny scene.
There are several little scenes you can watch with the two groups interacting. They're pretty fun, and laced with little in-jokes from both games.
...okay! Time for the second labyrinth.
Rise and Fuuka discover that the second labyrinth is in the second years' class 2...Yu's homeroom. Which the class decided to set up as a group date cafe.
Hoo boy. This is embarrassing...
By the way, I prefer Fuuka's Persona Q appearance to her regular appearance in Persona 3 by far. She's much cuter and less...perpetually Eureka-looking.
I just about died laughing at this exchange:
Teddie: (to Aigis) "May I score with you?"
Aigis: "I refuse."
After still more cutscenes...
GROUP DATE CAFE
Stop 1
The GDC has an almost embarrassingly cute layout...and a creepy mechanical voice that's directing the "guests". It also seems like there's going to be a dialogue scene pretty much every time you find a door from this point forward. I don't mind these dialogue scenes, they're fun and all, but I think Atlus could've applied some moderation here, maybe spread all the interruptions out a bit?
And in case I haven't mentioned it, Teddie is ten times more obnoxious in Persona Q than he is in Persona 4.
Things got hairy pretty fast here, so I headed back to heal up and see about new equipment. Elizabeth had a new request for me: Defeat a Card Soldier!
It's back to Wonderland for a minute...
It wasn't easy, but I defeated an FOE! As a reward, I got the Persona Phoenix! (And some other stuff.)
BIZARRE BATTLE QUOTE TIME!
(On encountering an Enslaved Beast)
Yosuke: "No more beasts! We already got a bear, a dog, and a Chie!"
(* This one is especially amusing because it comes up before the P4 team even MEETS the P3 team.
NEXT TIME: Group Date! Can the characters shut up long enough for me to explore the labyrinth?
OH GOD!
That was really uncalled for. I ship 'em so hard 
I do wonder how many cutscenes are different between each storyline. Obviously all the cutscenes during different, but after that, would they drop all deviations through each labyrinth, or have the focus change from time to time?
Meh, don't pay too much mind to me. I just enjoy those little details the dev team puts in games.
3446963 I love the details and all the team interactions. It's just, like I said...I really wish they were a little more evenly distributed. The way they keep coming at you one right after another gives you massive cutscene fatigue...
3446984 True. At least is not "Kingdom Hearts-bad," where there's a long cutscene before a boss battle, and if you lose, you have to watch the same cutscene, Every, Single, Time. With no skips.
I don't think anything can beat Xenogears' "cutscenes so long, we have a save prompt before, in the middle, and after the chat with Grahf" style.
3446984
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You wanna talk about cutscenes? Metal Gear Solid people, Metal Gear Solid.
Oh just wait till the big reveal after the fourth labyrinth, got severe cut-scene fatigue there. (Also one of the major reasons I stopped mid way playing a second time with the other Protag....)
3448870 You know, even something as vague as that is still kind of a spoiler...
(I mean, seeing as this is my first time playing it and all. Sure, this blog series is spoiling a lot of the game, but people who read it are choosing to read it. That doesn't necessarily mean I choose to be spoiled on parts of the game I haven't gotten to yet.
)