Obviously, I ended up talking a bit too much in the first segment of the DLC Personas, since these two articles were originally written as a single, super-long article until I decided to split the two up for easier consumption and presentation.
I almost wanted to do a bit where I talk about every single one of the other party member Personas for P3 and P4, but... that's a lot of work, and I feel like some of them are designs that I probably won't be able to appreciate until I see them in action, not too dissimilar to Makoto's Johanna or Futaba's Necronomicon, both of which look very underwhelming with pictures alone.
Anyway, while the previous part mostly had personas originating from Persona 4 and its spinoffs, this one features the ones coming from Persona 3!
[We'll resume with our regularly scheduled non-DLC Persona 5 reviews after this.]
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Orpheus / Orpheus Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Fool
Orpheus is the main Persona of the protagonist of Persona 3, and I find him to be much more interesting than Izanagi or even Arsène, for the simple reason that Orpheus is very explicitly a puppet, with some very mechanical-looking joints on his elbow and knees. He's got a giant harp attached to his back, and a red scarf, and the blank expression on this doll-like figure does really give a very striking look. The baleful blue that the default Orpheus has is kind of neat enough, but he looks absolutely killer in the 'Picaro' form. You'll get tired of me repeating this over and over, but the red and black does look damn good. Giving the harp some tiny devil wings is also a nice touch.
Orpheus hails from Greek mythology, and Persona 3's protagonists do have Personas themed around Greek myths. Orpheus is the mortal son of the king of Thrace, Oeagrus, and the muse Calliope. Some myths credit the god of sun, art, healing and prophecy, Apollo, as being Orpheus's father. Regardless of his parentage, Apollo favours Orpheus and granted him a lyre that he quickly mastered. Orpheus was so skilled with his lyre that animals and even rocks would be compelled to dance to his music. In this way, Orpheus became the most skilled and respected musician and poet.
Upon the death of his wife, Eurydice, Orpheus's grief caused his mournful singing to cause even the gods to shed tears. Orpheus went to the underworld and touched even the heart of the god of death, Hades, who allowed him to bring his wife back to the upper world on the condition that he walk in front and never turn around until the pair are back in the land of the living. However, in his impatience, Orpheus looked back after he made it out of the Underworld but before his wife has, causing Eurydice to vanish forever.
Depending on the myth, Orpheus would be torn apart prior to his death, until only his head and lyre remained. Some myths credit the maenads (female followers) of Dionysus for killing him, though the reasons vary -- some say the maenads rip him apart for spurning the gods, while some say out of jealousy for Orpheus would take no other female lover after losing his wife. His head, still singing, would float down the river Hebrus until it was buried in the island of Lesbos. His lyre, meanwhile, was taken to the sky and placed among the stars.
...if this myth, especially a man going to the underworld to get his wife only to look back and see her vanish, sounds very similar to the Izanagi and Izanami myth I talked about before... well, it's probably intentional! As far as I know, Arsène Lupin has no such myth where he goes to hell, but hey, two out of five isn't bad! Also, I guess looking back to see your dead wife after being warned specifically not to do so would fall under the purview of 'the Fool', huh?
Orpheus / Orpheus Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Fool
There is a second Orpheus Persona, this one associated with the female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable, and one thing I take away from writing this whole DLC segment is that there are a lot of spinoffs for Persona 3, 4 and 5. Anyway, 'female' Orpheus does have a lot of the similar characteristics to male Orpheus, other than the longer hair and changing the shape of the lyre to a harp. The yellow on female Orpheus's main body looks a lot better than the pale blue, I think? Of course, I did use this specific version of Orpheus and its amazing healing skills to basically carry me through any hard battles in the early game, so.
This Orpheus Picaro is probably one of the most noticeably drastic and most edgiest -- in all the best ways -- of the Picaros. Look at that absolutely badass spike-studded heart! The fact that there's a whole lot more red and the design looks so damn goth is definitely a plus. I think keeping the face porcelain-white to contrast the red/black colours, in contrast to Male Orpheus, works a lot too!
Messiah / Messiah Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Judgement
The final form of Orpheus is apparently Messiah, obviously based on Christianity... but the game does get away from making this an outright representation of Jesus by calling him 'Messiah' and basing him off the promises common throughout many Abrahamic religions of the coming of the Messiah, a saviour of mankind that will bring them salvation near the end of days. This guy is the final form of Orpheus, which I felt is also very out of place considering how I peeked into Persona 3's roster of protagonist Personas and they've all been pretty uniformly Greek/Roman-themed.
And... the design of regular Messiah is honestly kind of bland? It sure is a JoJo Stand guy, but unlike Orpheus or Izanagi he just looks rather... obligatory. The chain of coffins he carries behind him to presumably 'judge', as his Arcana implies, is a nice touch. But man, look at the Picaro version! The blacks and reds are nice, the contrast is neat,but it's the huge golden side-skirts and spiky halo behind him that really makes the design rather stand out.
Thanatos / Thanatos Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Death
Spoiling like the first fifteen minutes or so of Persona 3, turns out that the Persona 3 protagonist (the 'P3P', if you will) doesn't just have Orpheus as his Persona, but also Thanatos, who acts as a 'berserk' mode. Thanatos is the Greek god of death, the son of the primordial deity Nyx, and the twin of god of sleep Hypnos. Despite his role as a god of death, Thanatos is actually the representation of mortality and peaceful death, bringing the eternal sleep of death to everything on the world as a universal constant -- other gods like Keres would be responsible for the more violent kinds of death. Thanatos doesn't even take part in many of the bickering and power plays of the Greek gods, since that part is taken over by Hades, who is the god of the underworld and not death itself.
Thanatos is not cruel, but he is also indiscriminate and merciless. Some accounts note that Thanatos is hated by all, and hates everyone in return. While powerful, Thanatos could sometimes be outwitted, as happened in the legend of King Sisyphus of Korinth. Sisyphus managed to trick Thanatos into being chained up with his own chains. However, this act prevented all mortals from dying so long as Thanatos is chained, causing Ares, the god of war, to finally grow frustrated with wars that did not end, freeing Thanatos from his binding. Heracles is also known to have wrestled Thanatos once, preventing him from claiming the life of queen Alkestis, to whom the demigod hero is indebted to.
Eventually, as the myths solidified in making Thanatos more of a gentle figure, his depictions became a winged young boy, not too dissimilar to modern-day depictions of angels. He is associated with upside-down torches, butterflies and poppies, as well as a black sword on his hip.
Persona 3's Thanatos is probably one of my absolute favourite designs among these DLC Personas. It has a pretty slick black suit design that looks like a World War II soldier or something. Of course, Thanatos has the expected skull face of these death gods, but it's made up of metal and from the way it's textured it doesn't even lead to a proper gullet. It's just a metal, blank-eyed skull and a mandible that opens and closes. There is the sword on his hilt, of course, but the coolest part has to be the row of coffins and chains that form a massive set of cape or angelic wings on Thanatos's back. I mean, using other things like bones or whatever to make your angelic/demonic wings isn't particularly creative in these fantasy settings, but coffins? That's just so appropriate for a god of death, don't you think?
I don't have much to say about the Picaro variant. In this case, I feel like the muted colours of the original work so much better than the extra reds and golds they added, even if Thanatos Picaro does have some fancy head-spikes.
Athena / Athena Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Chariot
Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, philosophy, warfare, justice, law, mathematics, arts, crafts and a whole lot of other intellectual aspects of life. After Zeus swallowed the Oceanid Metis, the goddess of good counsel, their child Athena sprung from Zeus's forehead fully grown and armoured. Thus, she became one of the Twelve Olympians, the chief gods of the Greek pantheon.
As that abridged list of aspects associated with Athena shows, Athena is basically associated with any and all 'intelligent' and 'wise' crafts. Even her aspect of warfare involves more of the strategic aspects of warfare, as opposed to her brother Ares, which represents the bloody, gory aspects of war. Athena is worshipped by many Greeks, particularly in the city of Athens, and her symbols include the owl, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion -- a shield with the symbol of the Gorgons, Athena's hated enemies, on it.
Athena is involved in many, many myths, mostly as a wise and just goddess who aids heroes such as Heracles, Perseus, Jason and Bellerophon in going through their trials and tribulations. Unlike Orpheus, there isn't a single 'huge' legend about Athena, so I'm not even going to try to summarize all the legends about her here. Just know that you'll run across Athena if you read any Greek myth.
Persona's version of Athena depicts her with the traditional Corinthian helmet, often with a spear and a Gorgoneion shield. Persona keeps most of Athena's classical looks, but updates her shield into a gigantic ring around her, almost like a hula-hoop. It sure is attention-grabbing, and I do like that there's a 'face' on the shield for you to look at. Persona 3's deuteragonist, Aigis (named after Aegis, the shield associated with Athena) has Athena as her final evolved Persona, and it's pretty neat. I don't think Athena is my favourite Persona by any stretch, even in this batch of humanoid Persona after humanoid Persona, but I do like that the giant orbiting shield-ring does give her a rather unique silhouette.
The Picaro version doesn't really leave me much to talk about. It swaps the traditional spear for a wicked curved battleax thing, and there's a lot more golds, blacks and reds... it's a nice palette, but I think I'm a bit Picaro'd out at this point.
Asterius / Asterius Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Wheel of Fortune
The next two Personas are from Persona 4 Arena, a crossover between Persona 3 and Persona 4. I am a bit too tired to read even the synopsis of another Persona game after combing through P3P and P4G, so I'm not even going to try, but since Ariadne and Asterius are both Greco-Roman inspired, I elected to slap them here with the P3 Personas.
Asterius, or Asterion as he's sometimes called, was the name of two characters involved in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The original Asterion was the king of Crete. His wife, Europa, was seduced by the god of the skies, Zeus, in the form of a bull, and bore three half-god children. Among them was Minos, who inherited King Asterion's kingdom and banished his brothers. King Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon for his favour, and was supposed to sacrifice a beautiful snow-white bull to earn the god's favour. However, Minos refused to do so, keeping the bull and sacrificing something else. This enraged Poseidon, who caused Minos's wife Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull. Pasiphae and the bull mated, creating the monstrous being Minotaur (literally 'bull of Minos') -- a half-man, half-bull creature who would devour humans for sustenance. This Minotaur was also named Asterion/Asterius after his grandfather, though obviously the name 'Minotaur' was much more common nowadays.
The Minotaur was eventually trapped and placed in a Labyrinth designed by Daedalus. King Minos would force the people of Athens to send seven young men and seven young women to be killed yearly (some legends say every seven years) at the hands of the Minotaur when his son, Prince Androgeus, died due to conflict with the Athenians. This barbaric ritual ended when the hero Theseus, prince of Athens and son of Poseidon, killing the Minotaur after being securing the aid of Minos's daughter, Princess Ariadne, who gave him a ball of yarn to navigate the Labyrinth.
Persona's Asterius is... gigantic. It's a bit hard to tell here, but he's emerging from the a shadowy blob on the ground, with his entire upper body dwarfing most of the Personas available. It's a rather simple design and a surprisingly epic one for a minotaur -- a monstrous bull head made of metal and exposed flesh, fangs, chains holding him together and cut-off horns that burn with fire. Again, I do think that the simple original design is pretty neat enough. I like it much better than Asterius Picaro and his Darth Maul tattooed head, but it's still a giant shadow demon bull man.
Ariadne / Ariadne Picaro
- Monster Name: N/A
- Arcana: Wheel of Fortune
Meanwhile, Princess Ariadne, the minotaur's half-sister who would eventually lead to his demise, is also a Persona here. Princess Ariadne was put in charge by her father King Minos over the Labyrinth. However, she fell in love with the Athenian hero Prince Theseus, providing him with the string that he used to navigate the Labyrinth, as well as a sword. Theseus eloped with Ariadne, and while the legends give various reasons as to why, Ariadne was eventually abandoned by Theseus. Whether he's the cause of Ariadne's abandonment or if he took pity on her, the wine god Dionysus would take Ariadne as his wife. She would be killed by the hero Perseus during his war against Dionysus, being turned to stone by Medusa's head. However, Dionysus would descend into Hades, and bring Ariadne all the way to Mount Olympus where she would become a goddess -- of labyrinths and mazes, of course.
Anywa , the design of Ariadne is another one of those semi-robotic Stand-style Stands, though I have to admit that her Picaro design looks particularly killer. It might just be the little cage-like compass stucture around her head that she's wearing like a helmet, honestly. It's not easy to see in this screenshot, but Ariadne actually is manipulating a mass of strings that creates a maze-like pattern, referencing the labyrinth she guards as well as the string she lent to Theseus.
Ariadne and Asterius are the Personas of a character called Labrys from Persona 4 Arena, with Asterius being the 'Shadow' Persona... but, again, I'm not going to really elaborate too much about this considering the fact that the crossover plot is a bit hard to digest.
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And that's it! The 'DLC' Personas did overwhelm me and I did play around with them a lot, but basically in my playthrough I only make them 'legal' for me to use once I am able to naturally fuse them with the Personas I find at that point in the game. I ended up liking a fair bit more of them after using them, even if I'm always never the biggest fan of more humanoid Personas. Anyway, with the DLC's done, back to your regularly scheduled playthrough-based Persona reviews!
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