#and it isn't even the final boss!!

[theworstfangirl]

The overblot boys all being confronted with their own ugliest emotions, thoughts and impulses, stripped down to their rawest form, is exactly what I needed, on so many levels. Not only do we get their kickass overblot forms again, it's very satisfying to see how they've progressed past being trapped in that mindset.

Also, I love that Vil and Jamil both immediately were like: "Did I really act like this back then? Pathetic." I'm honestly really curious to see if the rest are also going to take one look at their mirror-phantom selves and go: "Is this really how I looked from the outside? Ew, gross."

[rindomness]

hello hi tell us about mementos and the security level

OH HELLO. Welcome to my personal hill to die on. This post is long. It's one of my out-loud rants in text form. Sorry in advance. There's a cut down there somewhere.

Thesis statement of whatever's about to come next is that Mementos fucks actually as a concept its execution was just horrible and also Yaldabaoth is a terrible final boss. OKAY LET'S GET INTO IT

First things first I really do think Mementos should have gotten a security level. The game plays "Mementos is the public's Palace" very straight, all the way to the end, insisting that Yaldabaoth is created by the public's desire for a status quo yadda yadda yadda. So like. Here's the screenshots actually

I didn't get the whole conversation mostly because I think I was streaming at the time and complaining out loud but like. He just straight-up says this? And then they do nothing with it???

Imagine this with me. Enter the imagisphere or whatever.

It's October. You've just defeated Okumura, and you just watched the mysterious black-masked figure you've been told cryptically about for a while now kill his Shadow. You watch Okumura have a mental shutdown live. It's horrific! It's worrying! What happened? What's going to happen to you? The Phan-Site meter starts dropping rapidly. You go to Mementos to prepare for the next Palace.

There's a security level.

NOT ONLY did this act make the public lose faith in you, but now you're enemy #1, and it's reflected in the collective unconscious. This Chekov's gun that they set up back in May goes off. You have to be much more careful in Mementos because if you aren't, you could get kicked out. The stakes are higher. Mementos, the public view of you, has changed. It's not just doors opening for you anymore.

THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. RIGHT? RIGHT??? BUT NO! No we don't get a security level until the depths, which contradicts itself, actually, because once you get to the depths, the whole POINT is that the public ISN'T reacting to you or your actions! Why the hell would they care that you're In There!

The obvious answer is that it's because the security level belongs to the Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth/the fuckass cup/whatever you personally call him. And okay, whatever, but the game goes out of its way to establish that the Grail isn't really a separate entity from "public desire," he IS "public desire," the status quo incarnate, so once again, I ask, why is this the only time you have a security level! (I know it's because this is the home-stretch to the final boss and mechanically it has to act like a proper Palace. I still think it's stupid.)

And now that I'm talking about the Grail. Hi. Hello. If you've talked to me on Discord you already know this but I fucking hate the Grail. I think it's stupid. I think it's thematically inconsistent. I think its only purpose is to be the "Let's fight God!" final boss. I truly believe that if I hadn't gotten into Persona 5 through Royal, I would not still be into Persona 5, because I would have gotten so frustrated with Yaldabaoth that I would have dropped the game. I regularly complain for half an hour straight about this thing in voice calls. One person once told me the only thing they knew about Persona 5 was that this cup sucked because I wouldn't shut up about it.

I've somehow managed to not do this on Tumblr but I can't really talk about Mementos without talking about it so I guess we're talking about the cup

Narratively: Yaldabaoth just sort of comes out of nowhere??? The whole game is building up to Shido. The whole game. And you do it! You defeat him! And then... there's this other thing??? Apparently??? I was genuinely really confused when I got to this part of the game the first time because I was going ok we beat the final boss complete with eight hundred phases! Hooray! And now there's this other fucker. Going back through the game there's some foreshadowing for him? But it's kind of all concentrated in the start of the game, around Madarame's Palace, when you're just getting used to Mementos, and then it all sorta just disappears.

YOU KNOW WHAT IS FORESHADOWED, THOUGH? MORGANA.

Imagine with me x2 because this is where I thought the game was taking us when it went "btw we need to tackle the depths now"

Morgana has no memories. Morgana knows there's something in the depths that explains who he is. Morgana assumes it's because he's human, and will become human again if he finds out what it is. The WHOLE POINT of exploring Mementos was for Morgana's memories! And then he starts getting these really unsettling dreams, right, where he's a Shadow, or has a Shadow, or whatever. And then you get to the depths.

What I thought was about to happen was that we were going to find out that Morgana was more or less what the Grail claims to be(a being created by the wishes of the masses) and that Mementos was going to be Morgana's Palace. "Oh but Morgana has a Persona-" Morgana's already a weird case I could easily see him having a Shadow or being a Shadow himself while also having a Persona. I'm ignoring Maruki because we're talking about vanilla and Maruki didn't exist yet.

I thought our final boss was going to be Mona's Shadow and that by defeating him(the part of Morgana(as a Shadow/Metaverse being/etc) representative of what they were trying to make Yaldabaoth: wanting to let the status quo handle everything, more or less, the desire to let the system do what it's designed to even if that thing is "crush everything in its path") we would reaffirm that change is possible as long as we all work together. Morgana getting to be this very physical symbol of rebellion and force of will and getting to go NO I want to try even if it hurts me.

What actually happened was... a lot more underwhelming.

What we got was, in a game where one of the primary themes is "rebellion against systemic injustice, you can't just get rid of the One Guy and fix Everything," a final boss who was... one guy who if you got rid of him you'd fix everything?

And I get it Atlus doesn't want to actually shake the boat that much but at the same time Yaldabaoth comes out of nowhere and says absolutely nothing of substance in a game that, over and over again, gets SO CLOSE to saying something really powerful and then sinking back into what's comfortable. It's the aesthetic of rebellion without the teeth of it.

Anyway now that I've complained for an essay's worth here's some positive stuff

I really do like Mementos. It gets a lot of shit for being repetitive and boring and like I sort of get that but on the other hand it is a JRPG. I'm not sure what you expected from the area that is, mechanically, "Here's where you go to grind." I don't see a problem with having this area. I think the special floor events manage to spice it up enough that it's not all that boring. I like Jose being there in Royal, I think he adds a lot, actually. The implications of everything Jose says are fascinating to me. The fact it's impacted by the weather! Like, as a world component, Mementos is so so cool actually guys. I know it's a Persona game so "world impacted by cognition" is sort of the bare minimum but it's really cool!!! The aesthetics fuck! The only layer I really don't like is.. fuck, I think it's Kaitul? Whichever one gets unlocked after Kaneshiro's Palace, I haven't gotten there in my current playthrough yet. It's just... too dark to see, all the time, imo. Mementos feels(except for... 90% sure it's Chemdah) very oppressive and spooky and I honestly think that's great. It's a depressing place to be! For a game about how corruption and systemic violence hurts everybody, it's really good!

In conclusion... don't ask me about Mementos unless you want an essay LMAO in seriousness I understand why Mementos gets shit but I think it should get less of it. And also that I could have fixed it(the cup. The cup is the big bad part of Mementos. Not the grinding you're going to get that with a JRPG no matter what you do you signed up for it when you launched the game.)

[franeridan]

reading volume 105 and I had forgotten we actually got mihawk's bounty and on page acknowledgement that he's a better swordsman than shanks??? they have half a billion difference in bounty mihawk's is still over half a billion above luffy's this is absolutely fantastic to me for many many reasons but especially because by god zoro seriously fought him ten volumes in. he really tried to fight someone with three times king's bounty with only one named sword and three weeks of experience as a pirate. he actually left his village at age sixteen specifically looking for him and went up to him at age nineteen convinced he was gonna win. and he had the guts to complain about mihawk using the butter knife to fight him too how is he alive he's so lucky mihawk felt like adopting that day

[varethane]

I did Hullbreaker Isle something like five times in a week (as various friends unlocked it and for relic weapon purposes), and this was BEFORE it was announced as one of the featured dungeons in the current event..... but no, I will not run it again, I refuse, you can't make me!!!

[henrysglock]

Every day I'm driven more insane by The First Shadow because it confirms so much just by existing, let alone the actual content of the show.

The team really went "No, no. You don't have all the information about Henry yet. We intentionally kept that from you. Also, all the adult characters? Yeah. They knew him. They all fucking knew him, which is why we couldn't have any of them be present in ST4. Kept that one from you too."

Just by making the play they confirm that there's at least another hour's worth of content at least tangentially related to Henry's story. We're missing so much about him if we just go off what we see in ST4.

Just by the synopsis, they tell us that Henry is already running from something, a Shadow that predates Hawkins and the Creel house. They also confirm that Henry might even have had friends. That some of those friends may have been the main adult crew. There are people who ought to remember him.

Like be serious. Be so so incredibly serious. Mindblowing.

[shevr]

update

[akemiiya]

i can't wait for deltarune chapter 3 and all the new asriel facts to come. because it takes place in the dreemurr house. which asriel lives in. which has asriel's belongings. which would mean that we will find out more about asriel. right. right. right. right. ri

[emissary-of-dog]

sometimes i look back at the super mario series and i'm like Jesus Fucking Christ they really had a song like the Elder Shroob theme in one of their games. god..

[spheciform]

Funny thing I opened the app right as you answered that

Other cool games for the DS that make use of both screens

The world ends with you, 999 Zero escape in it's last puzzle, rhythm heaven, probably more that I'm missing shdkd

Oh people have been talking about all of those in the notes and I think that's so cool!! Twewy in particular has been getting a lot of love! A second shoutout in my heart goes to bravely default. They didn't really do anything too special with it (unless you count the bravely second system which is made crucial to play the second game) as a DS game but putting it on the switch absolutely fucked up their UI to the point that I never played bravely default II because the UI was that bad. Look at this shit.

They had to do a lot of reorganization to fit it on one screen, which is partially why it feels odd, but the thing I missed the most was being able to tap any ability a job gives you and get a quick blurb about it rather than having to manually select it each time- something small but that added up when each job gives you like twenty abilities, in a game that one of the gimmicks is combining job classes to make the most insanely gamebreakingly busted combos possible.

The pause screen just felt cluttered in comparison too. There's so much dead space and nothing stands out enough to feel important, the text color is incredibly low contrast against all the heavy textures, it's just a nightmare. Which is so funny because they did open beta demos to get feedback(which I participated in), overwhelmingly the feedback was "your UI Is Bad And Unreadable" and they in fact did not make it better. As a side note it is sad what they did to the aesthetic of the game once they scaled it up for the switch- the low poly models in the original two games were at least simplistic and cute, and the hand drawn portraits in the pause menu and aesthetic choices overall lent itself to a very cosy sort of storybook feel, meanwhile the heavily detailed but still scaled down models of bravely default II feel almost uncanny and lost a lot of charm IMO

[sortanonymous]

Just remembered this one comment I had on AO3 (kinda forgot the fic) and now I can't stop imagining Elfilis as Elvis Presley.

[lydiacatfish]

i'm trying to write a dnd oneshot based on a recurring dream i have and one, when i mentioned that a guy in the group made fun of me for having so many dreams (it's not my fault! i have a lot of vivid dreams corey!!), and number two i'm three npcs in and this is already spiraling out of control

[clumsycapitolunicorn]

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[sittingoverheredreaming]

Maybe my hottest ToTK take is that I think, keeping all the gameplay mechanics the same, it would have worked better as a low stakes game with the goals of helping Hyrule rebuild and investigating Zonai ruins, with the later triggering the appearance of the Sky Islands and the depths as well as granting Link (or Zelda, there's zero reason Zelda can't be playable) Ultrahand and the other abilities (which in turn are super helpful for rebuilding!)

You can even keep most of the Regional Phenomenon without changes, either as things caused by the Sky Islands' emergence or frame it as the monsters' final attempts to maintain control after the Calamity's defeat.

There just wouldn't be Ganondorf waiting in a hole the whole game and Zelda wouldn't have been lost in the past. There wouldn't be really urgent things you should be doing instead of exploring or helping the towns, that would be the whole point. Just Link and/or Zelda making discoveries and helping people.

[ghostabocky]

thinking about kh3/khux/khdr and wondering if there’s any iconography or characters who have the potential for the same sort of intrigue as lingering will/the mysterious figures/the kh2 secret ending

[thecoolertails]

i cannot believe you have to do the entirety of impact crater every time you die against metroid prime

[waywardsalt]

before i actually go through the phantom hourglass manga to critique it i’m going to quickly just toss out a bullet point list of things i actually liked in the ph manga

- i like how the stuff w/ tetra in the first chapter not only sets her up but serves to contrast how she is as a captain vs. how linebeck initially is as a captain. the line ‘as captain, nothing is more important than the lives of my crew’ specifically

- link’s cute. hes just a little guy

- i’m a big fan of the added detail that linebeck tends to stick out his bottom lip. it fits really well with his character. as a smaller side note i like the way his nose is drawn. i just like the shape they went with lol

- the bit with the point card for eddo’s garage that is specifically noted to be Not In The Video Game is good

- for all intents and purposes what is done with the bellumbeck fight is really good

thats it everything else i either feel neutral about or hate/feel frustrated with