Metaphor: ReFantazio's Homo Jaluzo Is A Bad Baby, Let Us Help You Take Him Down

Like any colicky baby, the kid will start yelling his head off with a move called Deafening Din, which does a chunk of damage to your entire party, but also lowers their defense. It’ll then settle into its normal repertoire. Eager Bite means the kid teethes on you for a bit of Pierce damage. He’ll also stare at one of your crew weird and either inflict Daze, which lowers the target’s Accuracy, or charge up for a tackle attack, which just plain hurts. Occasionally, he’ll take a turn to charge up, then throw a tantrum called Jumping Playtime, which damages everybody. I saw a kid do this on a plane once for two hours straight.. It damaged everybody there too.

After a few turns, Gallica will get the bright idea to take out this kid’s eyes which is…well, that’s just dark, but okay. It does help that eventually the eyes regenerate, but still.

When the kid’s finally about to tucker out thanks to all the stabbing you did, he’ll use a special called Sour Scream to give himself five turn icons to absolutely demolish your party. And because he has the ultimate helicopter mom, soon after that, Joanna will stroll in and heal her poor baby’s wounds and about half his health.

So, hey, don’t suppose you took the time to do the Providing A Spark sidequest for the Gunner Archetype before you got here, did you? Be a lot cooler if you did, because the Gunner’s Piercing attacks are the biggest help when it comes to keeping the most annoying parts of this fight under control, especially since you can stick them in the back row of your party, and they’ll still do the same damage. It’s not a necessity, though, especially for Persona veterans who like to get the crit path dungeon out of the way first before fucking around with sidequests for two weeks.

What is a necessity, in that case, is having a Magic Knight and either a Warrior or Brawler on hand, because the Leap Thrust Synthesis is about to be your bread-and-butter for the next however-long-it-takes. The Magic Knight also has Marakukaja, which raises defense for the whole party. That’s also going to come in very handy.

Have a Seeker hang out in your back row. They can help out with pure damage when able, but largely, they’re gonna be your support, using Patra to get rid of Daze, and healing the party when they get low on HP. The Seeker also unlocks some pretty excellent Synthesis moves that do some hefty damage, but you’re gonna want to save those for your Leap Thrust turn more often than not.

Naturally, by now, you’ll have the honorable Heismay in your crew. Again, if you just Leeroy Jenkins’d this dungeon and didn’t do any of the side missions in town yet, you can keep him as a Thief. His Dark Magic spells do okay damage, and his Plunder spells mean you don’t have to worry as much about him running out of health or HP during all this. If you have the cash to spare, let him inherit the Merchant’s Gold Attack, which is at least a near-guaranteed critical every time. In an ideal world, though, you give him the Gunner Archetype, or you give him the Faker, and have him buffing your party and debuffing Baby Herman the whole time.

So, let’s start off with the bad news: Homo Jaluzo has zero exploitable weaknesses. On one hand, hooray, that means you can hit him with absolutely anything, and it has an equal chance of doing damage. On the other, it means you’re getting four chances to hit, no more, no less, before the baby gets his turn, and everything that comes after Deafening Din hurts like hell. So, the first couple of rounds are gonna be rough, largely spent keeping Daze off your people, and keeping your health topped off while the baby goes absolutely bugshit with tackle attacks and Gazes. That’s especially true if you brought a Brawler, since Perfect Punch can do a nice bit of damage, but only if they’re topped off on HP.

Eventually, though, Gallica will chime in with that wild-ass proposal that you should try to shoot the baby’s eyes out. That’s fucked up, and gross, and wrong, and despicable, and she’s absolutely right. Once you get the chance, let a Gunner use one of their Shot techniques for massive damage, or get the Magic Knight to use Leap Thrust, which will also take down an eye’s Defense so the rest of your party can do some decent damage. Also keep in mind that while the main body doesn’t have any weaknesses, you can lower its Defense, and your Seeker can raise your party’s attacks. Take advantage of that if you’re running with a Magic Knight.

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Now, technically, you could take out both eyes for a bit of peace and quiet in this fight, because it can drag on if you let it—but the eyes regenerate so quickly at this point, it’s actually better just to keep one intact but with low health. Then have your Seeker deal with Daze and heal incoming attacks a lot more often. You’ll eventually have to focus on one eye or the other again, but that’s better than getting caught out there with two eyes able to debilitate your entire party with one turn.

What’s more important, in that case, is doing as much damage as possible to the main body. Eventually, Lady Joanna will show up and heal up both eyes and a chunk of the main body’s health, typically right around the time he casts Sour Scream, and has a really painful round where he gets five turn icons. You might wanna take a round just to get healed up after that, but once everybody’s 100 percent or close enough to it, you can go right ahead and take out both eyes at your leisure. Now, once they’re destroyed, they’re gone for a while, and even better, occasionally, the wee baby Jaluzo will give up a turn because it’s “writhing in pain from having its eyes crushed.” Yeah, well, that’s what you get for throwing a tantrum in front of company. Now tell the nice heterochromatic boy you’re sorry.

Eventually, Big Baby Jesus will be done for, and your reward, aside from a shitload of XP and Reeve, is one of the saddest damn backstories in the entire game. I’d say that came out of nowhere, but, I mean, you did just kill a baby, you fucking monster you.

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