Curate of Curiosities

Previously, Ramona and her friends signed up for a quest to exorcise a possessed arcade cabinet, in a setup that's straight out of a creepypasta. Seizing an opportunity to become more than a mere grunt, Ramona accepts the offer from the ghost in her head to gain magic by consuming both the spirit inhabiting the cabinet and the soul of her one-time adventuring rival. This gives her the power to use words not only to damage her enemies, but also to convince those around her to look the other way when they notice that her powers are similar to those of the monster that ravaged the town years ago. She becomes convinced that she can use this power to become a true hero. At the same time, Jasper, the depressed theiving cowboy, joins the team.

As I've mentioned before, Jasper is kind of a weird character, both mechanically and with regards to their party niche. The first three party members make a nice fighter-mage-thief trio, even if it's muddled a bit by Ramona now having magic. Meanwhile Jasper? Their theoretically best attack has dreadful accuracy, and uses up pretty much all of their bullets, so they have to regularly reload their gun to stay viable, unless you can bolster their skillset with artifacts.

Sadly, the most reliable way to get new artifacts is by exploring the Tower, and now that Ramona's moving on to bigger and better things, the Siren won't let us waste our time item farming.

So our first order of business is to go innawoods to meet up with Trish again.

She seems to already know Jasper, especially after the death of their partner, so she gives them something special as a condolence.

It blocks off damage-over-time statuses. Very nice.

As a reward for our diligence in collecting souls, she has something very special for our murder-happy comrade.

You know how most RPGs have ultimate weapons for your party to equip? This game does something similar, but it's a bit...weird about it. There are indeed one-of-a-kind weapons available for each character, but they tend not to be the strongest weapons in terms of attack power, yet make up for it with some other effect.

Meanwhile the actual strongest weapons for each character can be easily bought from a vending machine downtown, courtesy of the Albing corporation. But they have a habit of breaking at the worst possible time, so they're far from viable.

This weapon gives Kyrie jacked-up magic defence. As you can see, both her defenses are suffering due to going for an attack-focused build, so this is a welcome addition.

There's a Magic Club? Well, I guess that makes sense. But since you joined us very early, and clearly have magic yourself, it's a bit weird that you didn't tell us about it sooner.

Remember how in Slimes, magic users were actively persecuted? Things are much better for them, but there's still some discrimination that they face. I feel like it's the same thing as in X-Men, so that's why they've formed a club here.

Oh, by the way, remember the fry cook adventurer that we talked to during the graveyard quest? Her name is Sandy, and it turns out she's a girl. (Obligatory joke goes here)

The other magic users, aside from Devon, are Tyson, an aspiring athlete with the power to guide anything he throws, and Hector, that one kid with the mask that the mimic disguised itself as, who has the power to spew poison gas whenever he opens his mouth. I brought up X-Men just now, and it's just my luck that I immediately find out just like in that franchise, there are some people who end up with bum deals when it comes to getting powers.

Under normal conditions, such as not gaining magic from a vengeful ghost, you can do the quests in this tier in any order. On this route, however, we're doing them in the order that they're listed. Fine by me.

We're not getting this first one out of the way just yet, though.

Dongs McGee has quite a few things in his bin. Now that we have someone who, in theory, should be able to use it, we can finally pick up this gun.

On the way there, we meet some fishing adventurer and her talking lightbulb partner.

It just so happens that the quest giver is right nearby! He seems to know Devon, so we get a bit more backstory for him. There's this abandoned lighthouse on the beach that's infested with monsters. The reason that Devon wants to help restore it is that it reminds him of his parents, who were both killed by the monster that is currently taking residence inside his friend. This whole situation is just one big powder keg, isn't it? Anyways, the door to the lighthouse is locked, so that gives us an opportunity to clear up some more things around town.

We give the arena another go, and this time we do a lot better. Who would have guessed that Ramona having an actual AoE attack would make this much of a difference?

Our newfound success gains the attention of someone who seems a lot like a fellow adventurer. With that name, he'd be right at home among our fellow adventurers. He's from something called Eidolon Playtest. It's basically a podcast about what would happen if Persona were a tabletop game.

Impressed by our battle prowess, he offers to spar with the party. He's gracious enough to step outside to give us time to prepare to face him.

His gimmick is repeatedly summoning ridiculously fragile tigers to mildly harass the party, while in the meantime he uses status attacks which summon more tigers.

After taking enough damage, he ditches this gimmick in favor of just shooting you with his gun. Twice per turn. So why even bother with the tigers?

Our reward is Jasper's one-of-a-kind weapon. And so soon after they joined us too. Plus, it has a reference that I actually understand.

The gun not only inflicts Depression (which lowers defence) on enemies, but it has a chance to inflict it on Jasper at the start of battle. If the fact that they were on suicide watch when they joined up didn't tip you off, being Jasper is suffering.

Speaking of, both Barty-boy and the arena baddies managed to whack them a couple times, so they're now eligible for spiritual healing.

Like Ramona, Jasper's parents didn't take their coming out very well, and they were kicked out of the house. This is how they met Jesse, their partner in both adventuring and romance.

This gains them the ability to get the hell out of dodge, like what you would expect someone who uses a ranged weapon to do. No more suicidal approaches for you, cowboy.

Now that we're locked onto the Siren's story route, a lot of bounties have been closed off to us, particularly the ones that require us to enter the Tower. However, despite this, there's still one more bounty that you can pursue.

It involves chasing this really hungry cop and his teammates around town. I've brought up the creator's left-wing sympathies before, so it's understandable that they're not exactly fond of the police. I do not expect this bounty to end well.

Aware of the very obvious threat he poses, the party eventually manages to corner him and try to take his gun, but find something extremely strange about him. This...had better not be what I think it is.

There's a parasitic rat attached to this cop's head, giving him an inhuman hunger for flesh. Anyone can, um, brutalize civilians, I guess.

His fellow cops, being completely unfazed by their coworker being used as a monster rat's puppet, join in shortly afterwards. They're quite a bit more manageable than I anticipated. They have buffs, debuffs, status moves, and heals, but it's nothing the party hasn't seen before.

Of course. Of course the trigger happy Ratatouille cops are racist.

That's another 500 in the bank, but money's not really an issue for us at this point.

Oh, by the way, I was initially planning to do the last of the four rat kings, but it turns out you need to go to the Tower in order to get the item drops needed to lure it out.

Innawoods once again...

Do you want to know why Trish was asking us to collect souls? All the souls we picked up has made the illusion that Trish constructed much more convincing. Conveniently, part of it look like the lighthouse on the beach.

Since Trish can reconstruct the lighthouse, that means that she can reconstruct the key needed to go inside. This is the same logic that MARDEK used when you had to enter the monastery in the woods.

On the way out, the Siren notices that Ramona's been acting a bit weird seeing Devon and Kyrie flirting with each other, and pushes her to admit what she really feels.

I expected her to have feeling for one of her party members, but wanting two of them? At the same time? That doesn't sound very heroic, to be honest.

No Siren, I don't trust you to push anything of Ramona's. If she were to start a polycule, I would rather it be nice and consensual for all involved, thank you very much.