Fortune is one of the 12 Major Arcana bosses. Coupled with Strength, it is fought during the seventh Full Moon Operation on October 4th. It represents the Fortune Arcana, and spins a wheel to attack.
Design
Fortune is a mechanical Sphinx, with a thin body composed of gold bars and gears with a distorted mask with two stacked eyes on its face, which resembles a man's profile from the side. Fortune also lightly resembles a bicycle. It possesses a long tail that drags on the floor made of a chain, and metal wings that twist and twitch. Like every of the Major Arcana shadows in Persona 3, the shadow takes design inspiration from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck,[1] which features a Sphinx sitting on top of a wheel, holding a sword. The mechanical design cues likely exist to contrast Strength, who has an extremely organic design, who's Raider-Waite Tarot counterpart also contains a woman with a lion, matching the pair well.
Fortune summons a wheel, which it spins, considered an extension of the shadow. This is an unsubtle reference to the Wheel of Fortune, the lengthened name of the Fortune Arcana, also featured on the Raider-Waite Tarot card. This wheel alternates red and blue on the outside, representing positive or negative effect, with the inner circle containing a number of different things, with images representing things from status effects to stat buffs.
Gameplay
In Tarot, the Wheel of Fortune upright represents the change of fate and accepting and embracing change and patience for positive results while the reversed card represents clinging to the past and being desperate for easy solutions. As the shadows are based off of the reversed Tarot, Fortune is desperate for easy solutions, spinning the wheel to inflict positive effects on itself, but it can always backfire.
