Given I already discussed the logistical absurds of Persona games happening in the same universe, now its time to discuss the thematic holes it creates.
First of all, the fact that now every single Persona cast are negligent and naive losers that didn’t do anything. Special Shame to the P1 and P2 EP casts who just let the Kirijo Group cause a cognitive crisis in year 2000 and then let them keep cleaning it up for the next 10 years.
Nanjo is the worst of them all because the Kirijo group was related to his company, but this goes for ALL OF THEM, because it was, again, 10 years. Nobody bothered to arrive to help Takeharu Kirijo even as he was trying to clean up the supernatural disaster with his scrambled, makeshift army of kids.
Takeharu is a non-persona user, but he is trying his best to clean up the mess. Now, of course his methods are questionable, but the story justifies them as “we are alone, we made this mess and we are the only ones who can solve it”.

Except that they’re not really alone. Why didn't they call it Kei Nanjo? Or why Kei Nanjo didn’t call? Koetsu Kirijo keepings things hidden until the Moonlight Bridge Incident is reasonable, but after the Bridge incident, Takeharu is the new boss trying to clean up the old boss’s mess But this also creates an issue, because the whole events of the Moonlight Bridge tragedy are the sort of things that all Persona users must have noticed simply by the raw, bruteforced resonance of the Sea of Souls. If it's a sea of souls, the Kirijo Group essentially caused a mass oil spill in the forms of the blob Shadows, creatures made of pure Kegare (visually the same motifs as Nyarlatotep in Persona 2, a black oil with masks).
This happens immediately after Persona 2.

Meaning that the bet of Nyarlatotep and Philemon.... Nyarly has all the reasons to say "WAIT, THE ROUND IS NOT OVER, THEY ARE USING RESEARCH DERIVATE FROM KANDORI, WHICH WAS MY PROMETHEAN GIFT”.

The Fourth Round is the Moonlight bridge incident, which means the Fall is coming sooner or later, humanity is DOOMED if not for eventual interference. Remember, Apathy Syndrome is a pandemic that would have people calling more and more for Nyx, killing the 12 shadows accelerated it, but it was doomed to happen even 100 years later once the P3 MC died of natural causes. This is, from the POV of a cosmic god, Nyarlatotep W. Sure, at the end the P3 MC theoretically wins the FIFTH round by savescumming using Philemon as the Blue Butterfly, but notice how weird it is to say that they objectively had to have 5 rounds?

Persona 2 is, then, NOT the end of the Philemon-Nyarlatotep Bet, Persona 3 is the ending with the Great Seal serving as the permanent left over protecting Death/Nyx from being reached by Erebus, thus theoretically, finally solving the Nyarly/Philemon war. Notice how this theory is both completely nonsensical and also perfectly valid because, again, Nyarlatotep has all rights to say “Wait, it's MY effort, the game is still ongoing”. So yes, I ended up retconning and changing the entire Persona 3 and Persona 2 relationship by making a series of observations that were NOT intended. But its mainly because the timeline is so tight that its the only possible way to realize it unless you see Philemon as a (even) bigger loser that decided to say “Uh, No Nyarly, that doesn’t count, go stay in the depths of the sea of Souls” and Nyarly panicked screaming “THEY’RE DRILLING ME, THEY’RE TURNING PARTS OF MY DESIGN INTO COMMON MOOKS" and then simply going "Ah well, if its not a round, time to just vibe and chill until they all die” until Philemon has to tell Igor to make a contract and devices the Save Point system to ensure that he doesn't have to explain Nyarly or Makoto what he is doing :P

And it gets worse, Strega has their hostile murderous Persona because the Kirijo Group experimented on them using the theories that Kandori wrote about during Persona 2 EP, including the danger that those users would have their Persona attacking them. In Persona 3, in the background, Strega runs a cult that murders people at petitions, with Takaya as the leader. Persona 3 never focuses too much on this because the game is set in Tartarus (also, notice how bizarre this is. “There is an evil cult lead by Strega…but let’s only face them in Tartarus”).

Takaya and Jin are directly products of Kandori’s research trying to end all life on Earth. This is Nyarlatotep’s plan working as it did in P2. Why are we pretending dude isn’t playing his fifth round too??

Damn, the cult is now public, they're extorsioning people, and while they keep their supernatural acts to the dark hour, ....damn, we go back into the whole "why the p2 and p1 cast aren't doing anything now, apathy syndrome is known, this cult WORSHIPS it, fighting a cult wanting people hollowed out for shadows? Sumaru city police department says Hi.

Takaya and his assasination website is precisely just a modern, digital era version of the JOKER urban legend from P2 Eternal Punishment. Maya and Katsuya should have arrived to arrest Takaya or die trying. Probably hanging with Maki because Apathy Syndrome and Kandori’s footprints triggered her. Persona 4 being the overall face of the franchise because The Animation is hard carrying the whole lore, because in P3 and P5, there are actually nation-wide disasters like the Plague of Apathy Syndrome and the Phantom Thieves media circus that should destroy the illusion of a relatively normal life in Japan. But because the games pretend to be in a world like ours, the result is this collective amnesia.

This isn’t just the Persona 3 gap, it happens perfectly within the Persona 3-5 trilogy. The Dark Hour is an alteration of the entire DIMENSION of TIME, that always caught and killed normal people who barely had ties to the supernatural. Tatsumi City Island has the bulk of victims, but Apathy Syndrome is described as a nationwide crisis in 2009.

Persona 5 is set in 2016, barely 7 years after this, and nobody seems to know it, treating the Phantom Thieves and Akechi’s mental shutdowns as the first major case of this.

The Persona 4 cast itself...now that I think about it, also suffers from it during the climax of Persona 4, with less justification because of their older age. Because the Fog is essentially, forcing Apathy Syndrome via airborne transmission by spreading the essence from Yomi (Japanese Underworld, again, a place full of Kegare, but probably natural kegare rather than Nyarly's corruption).

But hey, they rushed this on days, so...I'm nice to them, good kids. And shockingly, they actually got to do that in Persona 4 Dancing All Night, where Naoto explicitly crosstest their crisis with the Apathy Syndrome and diagnosticizes it in front of Rise, who remembers the name after Naoto mentions it. I LOVE YOU GIRLS. CONGRATULATIONS. BEST GIRLS OF THE PERSONA 4 SUB-FRANCHISE, FOR HAVING A FULLY FORMED FRONTAL LOBE"

But even then...P4 DAN treats Naoto having to cross-test and deliberately search buried, saved records to know about it. ...which is bizarre again. Either Persona 6 has mass amnesia, or the Persona 5 case is treated as the masquerade breaking moment…which is bizarre given Apathy Syndrome already was a health crisis affecting whole cities.

And of course, the bizarre reality that the whole backstory of Persona 5 should be happening after Persona 3. In fact, Wakaba’s death, despite being treated as an ancient near mythical tragedy, just happened 2 years ago. 2014. Wakaba did all that research and NEVER found either the Kirijo group overzealously protecting their turf before Yaldabaoth struck?

So, again, Persona 6 is going to be a in a truly bizarre situation, where all justifications are hilarious. Either the PTs go back to urban legends again AFTER FORCING MOBILIZATIONS OF WHOLE POLICE SQUADS, FORMAL ARRESTS OF TEENAGERS WITH NAMES and a massive media presence. OR Persona 5 is treated as the game that broke the masquerade.

Which still is nonsensical when Apathy Syndrome existed

…Why Persona 3 and 5 caused like 90% of this post, seriously. I do not HATE those games.

But, because the title is about the themes. This is the main issue here.

Nyarlatotep and Yaldabaoth are, objectively, correct. Humanity are selfish, destructive creatures who crave for death and suffering to always avoid the truth, there are exceptions, but they are limited.

And because they are limited, the only way to ensure the survival of the species is if you grab one of them and make them the co-ruler of humanity alongside a benevolent god that wants to ensure their existence. That is, in fact, Persona 5's bad ending.

Even SMT mainline objectively gets more peace than Persona, because SMT game spans millenia between Kalpas, cycles, etc. The worst worlds are the SMT I to II apocalyptic wars (from 1994 to 20XX -Aprox 2070) to the SMT IV-IVA backstory to the present day (2013 to 2038 for the people in Tokyo, the people of Mikado live in relative metaphysical peace for the 1000 years atop the dome). In III and V, the world existed for millenia between the Conceptions, so the crisis at worse only is the same one since 2003 to 2021 ("18 years later")

In Persona, the Persona users are the only thing preventing the end of humanity by having an unbroken streak of approximately 13 FLAWLESS victories plus 2 that weren't in the streak.

Persona 1, DEVA Machine Crisis + Snow Queen Quest= 2 wins (the implication of the game is that the Snow Queen Quest AND the SEBEC storyline happened at the same time and the SQQ was the unchosen party members) = 2 Ws for Humanity

Persona 2 IS. Failure. Persona EP, Win= 1 Win.

Persona 3, needing Aegis to seal Death into the Kid AND Then the Kid sealing Nyx from Ererbus. 2 Wins, I guess (technically Aegis is a L but whatever). Then beating Erebus again in The Answer to stop him from trying to corrupt Aegis and keeping them in a timeloop. …damn, we needed THREE world saving instances…FROM THE EXACT SAME GROUP.

Persona 4: The Izanagi trial, the DAN incident, Arena series…again, three times, but at least had the decency to wait and not have them in the same game. Also, Arena also involves SEES, to that goes for them too.

Persona 5: Yaldabaoth, Maruki, EMMA, Salmael. We have 4.

2+1+3+4+3= 13.

I’m NOT counting the Q games because of their nature as crossovers, but if we do, then it jumps to 15.

Humanity has “wished for its own end” at least 15 times. If you discount Pandora and Maruki because they’re individual pathologies, then its still back to 13. Yep, its that bad

And this is the trick

Because Persona 5 defined the Will of Rebellion as the ultimate anti-evil god measure, that means that you are subtracted from the pool of negative energy that makes them….well… I have a solution to end Persona. It involves us taking some specific measures.

Either we wear a Suguru Geto cosplay, or we cosplay SMT II plot by changing the marameters of who deserve to be in the new Eden.

Básicamente, estoy en una jornada jugando todos los Megatens. Ya terminé 34 y me da curiosidad por estos otros tres juegos. O sea, se ven bien tediosos.

Primero, Ronde

Ahora mismo estoy jugando Majin Tensei Spiral Nemesis, el juego está bien entretenido, pero un poco lento. Tipo, los escenarios me tardan como una hora en pasarlos porque tengo que hacer la estrategia más loca solo para ganarle a un Dragon o drake, además fallo un montón de golpes (aunque mi velocidad está en 30).

Entonces, quiero saber si Ronde es así o si es mejor o peor. También, HLTB dice que el juego dura como unas 4 horas, pero no confío en que sea tan corto, porque es un TRPG y solo un chavo ya se lo pasó.

Y sobre Giten/Special

Solo quiero saber si son juegos lentos o si tienen buen ritmo. ¿Las jugadas se pueden comparar con smt1/2 o Megami Tensei? La neta, Special se ve bien torpe y lento, pero lo único que da miedo en Giten es que el juego dura como 70 hs según HLTB y me da miedo sufrir el farmeo de Magnetite por el que pasé en SMT2… pero por 70 horas.

Y una pregunta para los tres juegos: ¿qué emulador debería usar en Android para jugarlos?

Last time I posted the Saturn Devil Summoner patch, the AI translation didn't go over well here. Point taken. I'd like the final release translated by people, and I'm asking for help.

The patch itself is done (RC8, runs on hardware). I've exported the full Japanese script as PO files with a line ID, scene notes, speaker and length limits on every line, plus a glossary. You'd be working from the Japanese only, not editing AI output.

The main story is about 14k English words. Demon negotiation is the big chunk, split into 16 personalities you can claim one at a time. Every contributor is credited in-game, and hand-translated lines replace the AI ones as they come in.

If you want to help fix it, comment or DM me.

Hi!

I heard when the Remake came out it had a few issues. What I want to know is have any of those issues been fixed or is it just worth playing emulated? I just want the portability of the switch for playing it but if it has issues I'll just emulate it instead

Edit: I MEAN HD REMASTERED.

I never liked how Yuzuru was written because he barely does much in the plot. I don't blame yuzuru as much as I blame atlus for not giving him enough character before he dies even in vengeance.

By accident tho, this makes Koshimizu the REAL chaos rep in both CoC and CoV. You talk to Koshimizu a lot more in both routes, especially in CoV. Koshimizu will talk A LOT after almost every VR battle you do to give his two cents on previous fights in the story. And in doing so, he shares his own ideology of chaos.

Btw did anyone of y'all ever run Lunar Hurricane?

Source: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/33090391