History WakeUpCallBoss / ShinMegamiTensei

** Shadow Yukiko, the boss of the first dungeon. The game makes it hard enough to keep up with her damage output, especially her multi-target fire attack (to which one of your characters is guaranteed to be weak) on her own. You can make her [[FlunkyBoss minion]] skip half of its turns if you have a good understanding of the battle system, but if you don't, between its damage, buffs, healing, and status ailments... good luck. She got {{Nerf}}ed in Golden, where it's ''she'' who becomes weak to Ice instead of her assistant who becomes weak to Electricity.

** The BonusBoss of Yukiko's dungeon, the Contrarian King, is meant to test your knowledge on fusion. It attacks with strictly physical attacks. All well in good, but its move Rampage is stupidly powerful, as an attack that hits the entire party multiple times with each hit taking around 200 HP. It's very common the the Contrarian King to land a TotalPartyKill right off the bat with that move. The only way to realistically beat it early on is to fuse a Persona that resists physical attacks.

** Shadow Kaneshiro is fairly straightforward in the original game and doesn't pack any tricks you haven't already seen, but in ''Royal'' after defeating his Piggytron (which comes first this time), you face a buffed on-foot phase in which he has two bodyguards which resist every element while Kaneshiro himself resists physical attacks, and one of them will shield him from all damage. All of them, however, are susceptible to most status ailments including sleep, which both disable them and cause them to take high amounts of Technical damage, causing the fight to serve as a drill on the buffed Technical damage mechanic; fail to learn from it, and assuming you get past the fight at all then things like [[DemonicSpiders Abaddon, Fafnir]], and especially [[spoiler:[[BonusBoss Lavenza]]]] will punish you later.

** You make it past Douman. Great. After one rather easy WolfpackBoss, you're given the choice, depending on what alignment you want, to fight either Gotou (Law), Thorman (Chaos) or both (Neutral). Gotou has a few of the same tricks as Douman, but isn't too bad since you now have the Heroine with Penpatra, which can cure said binding. Neutral and Chaos players have it harder, since Thorman, also known as the [[ShockAndAwe god of thunder]], takes Douman's tricks UpToEleven as not only does he have Bind Voice-- with virtually the same effect as Shibaboo-- he also has Zionga (high electric damage + 95% chance to stun) and Mazio (electric damage to 3-6 party members with the same chance to stun) meaning that, if you're unlucky, he can also literally [[CycleOfHurting stun-lock]] you while you're barely able to resist him. If you haven't figured out at this point that bosses pretty much lack [[ContractualBossImmunity resistance to status effects]], you're in for a bad time.

!Spinoffs
* [[OneWingedAngel Super Kamoshidaman]] in ''VideoGame/PersonaQ2NewCinemaLabyrinth'' really hammers in how much bosses have been buffed since [[VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth the previous game]]. After giving you a false sense of security with a ZeroEffortBoss first form, Super Kamodshidaman attacks with two carrot [[{{BFG}} BFGs]], one which does massive damage to a single target while the other hits a whole row for moderate damage. They both get to attack each turn and have different weaknesses. A team without multi-target healing and sufficient levels will simply not be able to keep up with his damage output and destroying the guns doesn't make him any easier: he starts taking multiple turns, covering his weakness with Fire Screen and dealing heavy damage with Kamoshida Kick. Like many above examples, you'll need debuffs to survive this one.

** Shadow Yukiko is a cakewalk compared to Shadow Kanji, the next boss. Shadow Kanji is flanked by two mooks, one that will buff the other mook with Heat Riser, a buff that bestows Tarukaja (attack up), Rakukaja (defense up), and Sukukaja (hit and evasion up) at the same time to a single target and other mook will hit you like a truck, likely damaging or outright killing a party member. And at this point, you're still scraping for items or don't have access to the revive-spell Recarm yet. Shadow Kanji himself will also use buffs on himself before hitting you or poisoning you. And ''none'' of them have any weaknesses, so your only means of getting a Once More is by landing a critical hit. This battle will show you that [[StatusBuffDispel Dekaja]] can be a life-saver [[note]]Though it doesn't work on things like Power Charge which only work on the next move, and guess what Shadow Kanji has?[[/note]] and you need to use debuffs yourself. Just like Shadow Yukiko, Shadow Kanji got {{Nerf}}ed in Golden by giving weaknesses to the minions.

* ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}''
** The Archangel mini-boss midway through Kamoshida's castle. It's the first boss to use Charge, which makes its physical skills strong enough to one-shot you if your Endurance is low, you aren't guarding, or your health isn't topped off.
** The first boss, Shadow Kamoshida, both serves as a warning that boss fights will be more dynamic than even bosses from the previous games, and as a test of whether the player is ready to take on the rest of the game. First, partway through the fight he heals himself to full health, forcing the player to focus on hitting a different target in order to stop the healing. Second, he can buff his attacks, which will make his attacks hit for very high numbers at that point in the game, teaching the importance of buffs. Third, the player has to recognize the cues that the boss is preparing for a powerful attack, and that they need to prepare to guard. Finally, the fight introduces special operations, which forces the player to learn how to keep up the offensive with a reduced party (and recognize story cues about who will do the job fastest).
** The second boss, Shadow Madarame, is a test of whether the player can keep up with multiple enemies as well as cover their own weaknesses. The boss is split into four parts that each get their own turn and have their own resistances and attacks, and the boss will target weaknesses as well as use buffs and debuffs to make his attacks hit harder. Later, the boss starts using a special status effect that makes your party member weak to every attack, which the boss will definitely exploit if you let him, as well as revive any dead parts if you don't take all of them down at once.
*** The UpdatedRerelease ''Royal'' adds a phase to the fight where he makes clones of himself which attack using their own elements and are weak to the opposite element, but repel their own. It serves as a test of how well you've mastered the Baton Pass mechanic and exploiting weaknesses; exploit it well and the fight becomes pathetically easy, but try to brute-force it and you're in for a miserable slog, and if you have trouble with him, then [[ThatOneBoss Shadow Okumura]] several palaces later will likely be a brick wall.
** Shadow Kaneshiro is fairly straightforward in the original game and doesn't pack any tricks you haven't already seen, but in ''Royal'' after defeating his Piggytron (which comes first this time), you face a buffed on-foot phase in which he has two bodyguards which resist every element while Kaneshiro himself resists physical attacks, and one of them will shield him from all damage. All of them, however, are susceptible to most status ailments including sleep, which both disable them and cause them to take high amounts of Technical damage, causing the fight to serve as a drill on the buffed Technical damage mechanic; fail to learn from it, and assuming you get past the fight at all then things like [[DemonicSpiders Abaddon, Fafnir]], and especially [[spoiler:[[BonusBoss Lavenza]]]] will punish you later.
* [[OneWingedAngel Super Kamoshidaman]] in ''VideoGame/PersonaQ2NewCinemaLabyrinth'' really hammers in how much bosses have been buffed since the previous game. After giving you a false sense of security with a ZeroEffortBoss first form, Super Kamodshidaman attacks with two carrot [[{{BFG}} BFGs]], one which does massive damage to a single target while the other hits a whole row for moderate damage. They both get to attack each turn, and have different weaknesses. A team without multi-target healing and sufficient levels will simply not be able to keep up with his damage output, and destroying the guns doesn't make him any easier: he starts taking multiple turns, covering his weakness with Fire Screen and dealing heavy damage with Kamoshida Kick. Like many above examples, you'll need debuffs to survive this one.

** Hydra is the first boss of the game, and it will test your understanding of Divine Amalgamation, status control, and proper utilization of Magatsuhi skills... by killing you stone dead if you fuck up on any of them. Forgot to bring Fire-resistant demons? Don't bother with -nda spells? Leave your Dark Dampeners at home because you think they're impractical? Your Darwinian failures shall continue [[GameOver feeding the Tree of Knowledge]]. And if somehow Hydra doesn't convince you to use the mechanics available to you, [[FinalBossPreview Nuwa]] most certainly will.