Persona Q Part 6: Ask me out plz.

The second labyrinth in Persona Q is the Group Date Cafe. Unlike You in Wonderland, the GDC seems to be a familiar theme for the Persona 4 cast drawing embarrassment and blushes from the cheeks of Yosuke and Chie. The very fact that I am slowly getting lost at their conversation means I severely need to catch up on my Persona 4 the Animation/Persona 4 The Golden history lessons.

But first, my current party:

The design of the labyrinth is as bizarre as You in Wonderland, however as it doesn't have a theme it can draw direct inspiration from, the Group Date Cafe ends up looking like the richest representation of putrid young love. The First Stop, in other words the first floor, has hearts, plenty of pink, rings, and sick love emanating from each cursed corner of the labyrinth it actually felt like Cupid himself went there and took a glorious dump to decorate the place. Even the FOEs present on the floor are modeled after the international winged symbol of naked love.

Speaking about the FOEs, the Fysis Oikein Eidolon (it's a mouthful isn't it?) that are introduced in this labyrinth are more peaceful compared to their Card Soldier brethren back in You in Wonderland. These FOEs are stuck in place but they do rotate 90 degrees whenever the party moves one space.

If the party gets in the FOE's line of sight it will shoot an arrow that will flip the exploration control scheme (eg. left becomes right, but broken hearts still remain) until the party moves a number of steps. Flipping the control scheme doesn't sound too dangerous, yeah, since it only impairs navigation, it doesn't do anything critical to the party unless baka onii-chan (that's me) gets confused over the simplest things.

Flipping the navigation controls are, for the most part of the First Stop, paired with the rooms with spikes on the floor. That's right, another new labyrinth feature: spikes.

These spikes aren't all that dangerous but it's still best to avoid them at all cost. While they don't offer chip damage and slowly deplete the party's HP, stepping on the spikes deplete the SP of the party limiting the use of skills in battle.

New enemies are also introduced in this floor the most annoying being the "Masked Boulder" as Rei calls them (aka shadows with Basalt on their names). They're pretty durable but their elemental weakness (surprisingly) is lightning. So pack your bags with Zio and its family of biri biri attacks because you'll need it later in the floor boss fight.

Party events focused more on the P4 cast this time around so that they could catch up with the character development of the P3 cast. The majority of these events were repetitive though focusing on the difference between the P3 cast and the P4 cast. Also if I were to pick one P4 character that I relate to the most it has to be Teddie. That bear's eternal search for an undying romance is just...just...I know it so well that it hurts (queue Sadness and Sorrow Naruto music).

Anyway the game emphasized two notable differences between the cast of P3 and P4. The first one is their method of summoning their Persona.

Obviously the P3 cast's way of calling forth their Persona is cooler. After all who wouldn't want to shoot themselves in their head and survive while summoning their personal epicness personified? The P4 cast's way is sorta boring since they have their Arcana tarot card floating in their hand and then shattering it to call forth their Persona, I mean whuuuuuuuuuut? I do have to agree that the Japanese mythology Persona of the P4 cast are way cooler than the Greek mythology Persona of P3. 
The second comparison was their respective purpose in fighting the Shadows.

While the P3 cast said that their purpose was to 'save the world', the P4 cast has a more specific purpose which is to find the murderer at large in Inaba. This triggered Yosuke to question his drive to continue fighting the shadows in one cutscene with Yu.

First Stop of the Group Date Cafe doesn't have much to offer in terms of difficulty in navigation. The spikes were pretty easy to avoid, and so were the FOEs. Random shadow encounters were still pretty frequent but there were only around four varieties of shadows throughout the First Stop. Along the journey the party encounters an area where a mechanical voice directs them into playing along a quiz show. The questions were mainly subjective so whichever choice you pick the gates will still open.

I'm hoping that those weren't just random events thrown in the mix to add novelty in exploring the floor. The questions asked do add some relevance to the First Stop making me wonder if my answers would play a larger part deeper in the labyrinth.

The mini boss fight right before the stairs leading to the next floor were against five Idle Basalt. Like I said above these Masked Boulders are incredibly durable and only answer to lightning elemental attacks, but even if I was spoon feeding them their weakness in their figurative mouths I still got whooped and subsequently suffered my first Game Over. The Game Over screen features the typical Persona-styled parting words but with the added effect of two creepy deep red eyes staring at me. I didn't pay attention to the Game Over message as I was close to raging at the time. Why you ask? Well I was just casually playing the game clearing some Requests and leveling up since my last Save but then those friggin' masquerading Geodudes had to serve me my first KO.

game over

Save data lost, experience lost, rewards lost, but time continued to move. Son of an incredibly big torchic.
I settled for the dreaded level grinding technique and fixed my party removing Chie and my darling Yukiko in favor of Yu and Akihiko. The two grey hairs I added were a couple of levels behind so I really had to grind a lot to get them up to speed. While level grinding I also redid the Requests I finished which were fusing Xiezhai, defeating a Card Soldier (the first one encountered back at You in Wonderland), and retrieving an arrow fired by one of the golden babies in the First Stop of the Group Date Cafe. 
Speaking of the Card Soldier, it has a pretty big HP but with the majority of the party at level 16 its attacks are bearable. It doesn't have any weakness so I resorted into a full out physical brawl. It took me 14 turns for it to bite the dust but the experience earned doesn't really pay off with how long the battle went.

Now then, back to the Idle Basalt. I came back with authority having four Zio mongers on my party. The P3 protagonist serves as support for the rest of the party. Yu, Akihiko, Aigis, and Zen & Rei are my careless tanks serving up as much damage as they can. I recommend using a multi-targeting stun skill to at least keep some of the Idle Basalt's mouth shut. The boulders are only ever dangerous once they spam Stona petrifying whoever is the target. After Stona they charge up then jump on the bandwagon attacking the same party member.
I managed to get away from dying through Healing Breeze but it still kept me on edge.
Again paralyzing even just two of the Idle Basalt would be really advantageous. I managed to win without anyone dying. It's a big success with a lot of thorns encountered if I do say so myself.

Surprisingly neither Fuuka nor Rise contacts the party to say something like 'There's something happening inside the Velvet Room. Come quick!'. There's still a small area left to cover after the mini-boss fight but other than the treasure that could be acquired inside a room filled with those nasty spikes, the stairs are just poking out just asking to be taken.

But taking the stairs is something I have saved up next part. Have a nice day.
Gotta go!