Persona 3 - Low Level Part 2: Dancing Hand

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MoogleBoss

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Published on February 25, 2014 2:37:49 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNPFMrIL-dE

Game:

Persona 3 (2006)

Duration: 3:47

2,269 views

28

Second Tartarus boss, faced on the same Tartarus visit as the first recorded video in the challenge (and my second visit total). Since I rely a lot on fusing Personas with SL bonuses, I can't really permit myself to waste too many days going fighting/grinding, though at this point in the game there are no SLs during night time (changes when Tanaka and the monk become available).

I must say my first visit to Tartarus... spoilt me a little bit in terms of expectations. It wasn't an unstable day (one of the days where accidents happen more often on the floors) but I got a ridiculous number of floors with only chests and no enemies (and Death/Reaper approaching after some 40 seconds), which let me rack up around 100K in cash and some in equipment that could be sold - swords and shoes were the floors 2-5 bounties.

When levels are low and the difficulty is high (Maniac Mode), dealing with multiple enemy bosses can be pretty tough when there's no easily exploited weakness. In the first boss fight against the Venus Eagles, it was piercing physical damage (right now just Yukari's bows; the MC only has access to one weapon type in P3P). The knockdown mechanics have changed to resemble Persona 4's, so I have a choice: either knock everyone down and perform an underwhelming all-out-attack (causing all living targets of the attack to recover from the knockdown) or make one enemy dizzy by attacking them while knocked down, limiting the number of threats during a single turn (relative; depends on characters' turn order, which is subjected to further variables by characters getting KO'd and being revived) temporarily, which helps when the number of enemies is so high.

The hands are in many ways more menacing than the three eagles. For one, their repertoire has expanded to include Zio, elec damage that strikes Yukari effectively (OHKOs) and Magaru - multi-target wind damage. If you remember, the eagles used the ST Garu, which still kept us on our toes because of the huge damage Junpei suffered from the spell. Now imagine how much worse things are with Magaru - the spell now hits all three (also wounding MC) and they can actually doublecast Magaru for an instant gameover. Really bad.

But now we've explored 4 extra floors in Tartarus's first block and what advantage does that bring us? Some new armour (Shirt of Chivalry gives +3 to males; another reason why female MC is somewhat inferior to male early on during the challenge) but most importantly... item magic. Magaru, Mabufu etc. gems deal fixed 50 dmg, functioning as effective magic when appropriate, and are far superior to the laughable means of inflicting damage that are currently at my disposal.

It did take a lot of time to get the necessary gems... But I need to farm for all kinds of purposes in this challenge (summoning Personas at huge Maniac Mode prices for instance), having equips and accessories for all purposes etc.

However, as hard as the gems hit, we still need to survive until the enemies are dead. Because Orpheus was starting to get too weak, I fused her with Apsaras and got Angel, who is slightly higher levelled and stronger (and doesn't have any notable weaknesses outside of instadeath which is absent right now anyway), inheriting Bash, which gives me a powerful Strike attack that the hands are weak to (no fists on anyone in the party available yet). I knock all three enemies for extra damage (in spite of feMC's Great condition, it whiffs pretty often which caused many resets), then make one of the targets dizzy to have extra breathing room early on in the fight when the enemies are still healthy. After this the aim is to inflict as much damage as possible while keeping HP high and praying effective magic doesn't strike the wrong targets (or, indeed, anyone at all).

Junpei was absurdly lucky in this battle, dodging things left and right even though his condition was normal (Good). I finished the battle with Pixie, because I will want her Dia spell card later for one of Elizabeth's requests.

There was another boss left at this point of the story/year - Rampage Drive - but my party was way too weak to take it on. This meant I failed to carry out one of Elizabeth's proposals (getting old doc #1), but that's okay because the reward was nothing special and we'll be failing some of her requests whether we want to or not (namely the random encounter drop ones).

Oh, and I'm really sorry for turning Mitsuru off, everyone! I suddenly found out there's such a thing as "too much Mitsuru" after climbing the same few floors of Tartarus like half a hundred or so times for money and items, and forgot to turn it back on for the battle. Yeah, it's nowhere as lively without Mitsuru's commentary.

Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c28XzFFSOOfN_E02Ybp1SK5

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