Persona 5 - Deeper into the Ship
We are not yet done with Shido and his ship or self-righteous bullshit. There are still more letters to get and more mini-bosses to go through before we can have the final showdown. As of now we have met some corrupt people who hide their darkness behind a thin veneer of respectability. Now we will see those who have shed the cloak and have their criminality on full display. Having Ryuji maxed out meant I did not have to engage with most of the enemies. Taking them by surprise caused me to win the encounter without an actual battle. This cut down the amount of time I had to spend in useless fights. I remember this was a feature in Earthbound as well. When Nes is of high enough level, the enemies run away from him. If he chases them down, the battle is won automatically instead of going through the motions of fight where I will not be hit but still waste time with the encounter set up. I can not think of another game I have played which implemented this strategy. I appreciate this quality of life improvement in Persona 5. When Joker hits them with surprise and wins the automatic encounter, he also gets one of the shadows. This means the game is already over a hundred hours long. There is no need to have extra padding to extend the time. The first time around, I did not have Ryuji maxed out, so had to go through all the encounters. Having the ability to avoid them has cut down my time by a significant number of hours.
Media is the fourth pillar of governance, and it is represented here by the TV station boss. This man owes a favor to Okamura and Haru is here to cash in. He offers condolences at her father’s death but immediately calls him a fool. He had televised Okamura’s death. This vulture of a human is giddy with excitement when he remembers how high his ratings were when he showed a man die live on tv. His shamelessness at broadcasting a snuff event is disgusting. Haru is devastated to hear this dumpster fire of a person talk about her father’s death with such glee. The rest of the team is close by. They realize what is happening and move in to teach this man a lesson. TV station boss is handed a beating, and in return he hands the team another letter of introduction. This guy gives us the first confirmation of Shido’s dealings with the criminal world. Kaneshiro, the low level Yakuza we had dealt with earlier was collecting money for Shido. All the drug money he amassed by blackmailing and coercing students goes towards electing this man the prime minister of the country. Same with Madarame and his counterfeit paintings business. He had been giving a cut to Shido. Looks like Masayoshi had his hand in every dirty pie in this country.
The IT company guy is the next target. Futaba has a personal grudge against this man. He was the one who used Medjed name to go after the Phantom Thieves. Since that was originally Futaba’s alter ego, she is especially pissed about it. She gets the confession from him and he is forced to right a nice letter of introduction for us as well. At this point these people are just comically evil. They pretty much just stop short of saying, “Isn’t crime just the best. Can’t wait to fool more stupid innocent people and do more crimes.” After the IT guy is beaten, he also confesses to taking all the data Futaba’s mom was working on. He then proceeded to delete all her research so only Shido had access to it.
As we get further, Shido’s connection to the Yakuza only becomes more apparent. His security boss is a literal Yakuza. He keeps showing up at the most inopportune moments and leaving the Thieves with shadows to fight. He is finally cornered, and Joker asks him for a letter. He would only give them one if Yousuke would draw a tattoo design for him. Yusuke draws a phoenix for him, which does not look too great. To everyone’s surprise the Yakuza Cleaner loves it. In fact, he loves it so much he tells Yusuke to come work for him. Since that is not going to happen, we will have to fight for this letter too. By now even the team members are annoyed they have to fight even after they have jumped through all the hoops. This is the last letter the team needed and after fighting five mini bosses, we are ready to go meet the real boss.
Not so fast. There is one more person we have to deal with. Goro Akechi got his marching orders from his boss. He is tasked to take out all the Phantom Thieves before the election, and he is here to fullfill his orders. I have talked about Akechi and his motivations already. He is an outcast just like everyone else in the Phantom Thieves. Joker tries to reason with him, but Akechi is too far gone by this time. Dealing with the horrors of the metaverse alone have broken his mind. Every single person who compares themselves with the Thieves has faulty logic. In his pre-battle anime speech, Akechi goes on to compare himself to the Thieves as well. His speech boils down to, “I have killed people, caused psychotic breakdowns leading to massive catastrophe. And you guys have slapped some people around. Aren’t we the same?” No bitch. Murdering is not the same as hitting somebody.
Akechi is powerful but not enough to beat the whole team. He does not handle losing well. Instead of going down, he brings out his black mask. Finally, the Thieves know something we have known for a long time. Akechi is the mysterious black mask who has been causing the mental shutdowns. Akechi is only the second person we know (Joker being the first) who can hold more than one Persona. As he says, if he had met the Thieves earlier, his trajectory in life might have been different.
Second part of this fight is considerably harder. Akechi has been causing the psychotic breaks in the people and then solving those crimes do get fame and fortune. The cognitive Akechi shows up to kill the real Akechi. That is the last straw. Akechi is done with his daddy’s murderous ways. Well, he is not going down easy. Maybe Shido should have come up with a better way to deal with his strongest hitman. The dumbass cognition takes to long with his gloating and the real one shoots him. Akechi has a non-metaverse related change of heart. He decides to help the Thieves escape so they can change Shido’s heart. He drops a barrier between Thieves and the shadows while he fights the cognitive version of himself. Since they never show him die, I think he just escaped the metaverse and that is why they can never get his signal.
I think that wraps up enough bosses to allow us to finally fight Shido himself. Once we can secure the route to the treasure and send out the calling card we can finally rest and come back to fight the final battle.
05-22-2020
