10 – Pharos / Ryoji
For convenience I’m combining the proper Pharos Social Link with the Link Episode hangouts with Ryoji in the latter few months of the game. Pharos is the first person we interact with in the game, and he immediately presents a gripping mystery. We don’t learn exactly what he is for a long time, but the game provides us with a lot of clues toward a truth that at first felt too ridiculous to be accurate.
He only appears during the Dark Hour for a while, vanishes in much the same way as the full moon Shadows, represents the Death arcana, and is wearing a black and white outfit reminiscent of a prisoner’s clothing. Having played Persona 5 not too long before this game, I really zeroed in on the prisoner outfit part and guessed that he was *something* sealed within the protagonist. I didn’t end up guessing things exactly right, but the mystery of it was entertaining.
On the Ryoji side, I actually thought at points that he was going to be a queer romance option. He and the protagonist have a lot of conversations about life, meaning, and companionship that foreshadow a lot of Persona 3 Reload‘s final bits. He truly has a love and compassion for humanity, but especially for those he cares about, something that shows a lot in how he begs the protagonist to prioritize his own happiness and peaceful existence over even the lives of everyone on Earth.
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