Game Breaker / Persona

While the Persona spin-off series is less difficult than their Shin Megami Tensei parents, that doesn't mean they can't be as Atlus Hard during some tough spots. The following gamebreakers should help take that edge off a little bit more.

In General

• Auto-Mataru, Auto-Maraku, and Auto-Masuku let you commence the battle with their corresponding group buffs active if the Persona with that skill is your active one at the start of a fight. Having all three buffs on can turn most random encounters into a breeze, and with a boss fight you save a few turns of setup.
• DLC Personas, where available, can classify due to learning extremely strong skills ahead of the curve. Your first time summoning them from the Compendium is also free. Granted, they do cost real money to acquire, so there's a bit of Bribing Your Way to Victory in their case too - at least, until the 2022 ports of Persona 5 Royal included all of the DLC for free, and the original PS4 release of the game made all of the DLC free to match.

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Persona 1

• When you enter the mall on Aki's side, you can't leave until you beat the boss in the mall. This might be extremely difficult if it wasn't for the fact that there is a shop that sells elemental stones. Normally these stones are one-use third tier spells, however use them in a fusion, and the result is the Persona is guaranteed to learn the third-tier spells at Rank 2. The result is Personas that immediately learn strong elemental attacks that deal AoE.
• Gozu-Tennoh/Vortek. A Chariot Arcana starting with only Squash and Poison Sting, it's not able to attack well except when it ranks up to 3 when it learns Megido, as long as the enemy doesn't block or reflect Nuclear it's not hard to wipe the entire enemy. Keep using him and he learns Megidola, the 2nd tier in Almighty. Slap it on to Mark and it's possible to have him surpass the party in levels. When he max ranks and is too frail to continue, return him and you get a Grydyne Stone.
• Lilim. She's weak to most physical attacks and got a pretty crappy default skillset, but she absorbs all magic except Expel or Miracle, resists Almighty and reflects Nerve attacks, which means she shrugs off status effects as well. While her SP cost may be a bit high for when you can initially fuse her, thanks to the skill inheritance system, she can be made with Megidolaon. While this is good for any run, some guides for a Snow Queen Quest Max Ambrosia run recommend grinding the protagonist to the point he can fuse her like this shortly after the route begins, and for good reason: while she's not required for doing Thanatos Tower first, she alone makes climbing it much more manageable.
• In this game, fusing a Persona in a specific way during certain moon phases can give the Persona a hidden skill (Unknown Power) that may trigger when the Persona is at Rank 6 or higher, its user has Best compatibility with it and is on critical condition. While all of the Unknown Powers are potentially useful, Latent Revival is notable. It may activate when the user dies, and it revives and fully heals its user. To balance this out, the Persona goes back to Rank 1, has to learn its skills again and can't rank up for the rest of that battle. But while you raise the Persona's stats through Rank Ups, its stats are not reset when this triggers (and this seems intentional, as the PSP version's manual teaches you all of this). For perspective, Pixie only gains Luck and Magic Attack on a Rank Up, and Luck already maxes out on its own by Rank 8. Just grinding her Rank to 8 twice puts her Magic Attack on par with what you'd expect from the party's Ultimate Personas. And you can keep raising it. Combine this with the other fusion mechanics, and if you don't turn her into the team's healer with Mediarahan, you could have her fire a really powerful Megidolaon for 2 SP (and even Garu or Zionga could do ridiculous damage on some enemies). And this is a subpar Persona; there are many others that can exploit this, including some of the Ultimate Personas and the aforementioned Lilim and Gozu-Tennoh. Any Persona who can raise all stats could have them all maxed out with enough grinding (and that's likely far less than the required to get the higher-end Personas).
• Vohu Manah/Abracab; it has the strongest light skills, the strongest healing skill, and the final boss killer Hieroglyphein. That's not the best part, however; the real fun is Binal Strike, which does damage equal to twice the user's HP. If your level is high enough to summon Vohu Manah, your HP will be so high that nothing will be able to stand up to Binal Strike. But you need revive magic, of course, which costs a lot of MP... actually, that's not an issue for two reasons. First, MP cost is calculated by the Persona, not the skill, and skills can be added to a Persona that doesn't learn them naturally, meaning you can abuse the system and, in theory, get a Persona with a single-digit MP cost that has Samarecarm. Second, dead characters are revived with 1HP after the battle ends, meaning that all that's needed is healing and, if you're able to summon Vohu Manah, you've probably found enough Spell Cards and got a high enough level that you have something with Mediarahan (possibly for a low MP cost, as previously stated). By the way, Vohu Manah himself has Mediarahan, and since the dead character will be revived, he or she can then use Mediarahan on him or herself, making Vohu Manah 100% ridiculous. The catch, of course, is that Vohu Manah requires certain demons be fused with his totem, and by the time you are high enough level to fuse him, nothing in the game is a threat anyway.

Persona 2

• Exclusive to Innocent Sin, the game has its own version of Persona 4's Hassou-Tobi; the fusion spell Dashing Strike, performed by combining the low level spell Zio and weak physical skill Tackle. At least five hits of Havoc + Elec damage to all enemies on the field, and if there's only one enemy such as a boss, it probably won't pose much of a challenge after a few turns. The only catch is most mid-level to high-level Personas won't be caught dead with Zio in their skill list, so you have to have Zio skill cards to make liberal use of the Fusion Spell in the later half of the game.
• Also exclusive to Innocent Sin, Pegasus Strike (any Wind spell + Sonic Punch) might not be one in the long run, but being able to deal about 400 damage points at around level 10 is still something to consider.
• What is game breaking in the long run is Eikichi's ultimate weapon, the Supernova, which is exclusive to Innocent Sin. Not only is it the most powerful weapon in the game, but you can also get it very very early. It allows you to mow through the first half of the game and some of the latter half with extreme ease. Downside is, it's only obtainable through luck as a prize in the Sweepstakes.
• The spells Hell Desert, Megalo-Fire, Storm Nightmare and Maelstrom in both games. Each is a Total Party Kill spell avoidable only by one of two means; luck (as these spells are ungodly accurate) or resistance to certain elements (in respective order; earth, fire, water or wind). These spells are available late in the game, but not as late as the ones below and quite easy to chain given the composition are simply any earth/fire/water/wind spell, followed by an almighty spell, then a specific high tier spell of the corresponding element.
• Artemis (Maya's Ultimate Persona) may be one of the best Ultimate Personas in the entire duology. Her Crescent Mirror is rarely resisted by enemies and consistently deals good damage, but she really shines defensively: She repels every single magical element, and while she's weak to all physical ones, that's easily covered by Tetrakarn and Diarahan, both abilities she learns on her own (except for Tetrakarn in Eternal Punishment). Eternal Punishment having Maya as the main character also means the player can make her stats good enough to actually survive most of the hits she's weak to, and when combined with mutations and good skill card use, there's little reason a player would switch Artemis out mid-battle (save for using specific skills she might not have).
• One broken spell combo is "Trimurti" by the personas Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, which will KO all non-boss enemies. Very useful for wiping the floor with random encounters and Level Grinding. However, this only applies to Innocent Sin since it is nerfed in Eternal Punishment in that it will drain all SP from the party members involved in the spell.
• Satan and Lucifer are not only ridiculously powerful Personas by themselves (both have one-hit-kill spells along with a plethora of offense options, and the latter in particular resists everything on top of being immune to Holy, Dark and ailments) but they have an exclusive Fusion Spell, "Armageddon" which skips the damage numbers and just wipes out the enemy party. No boss can actually deal with it in Innocent Sin; and in Eternal Punishment only two bosses (three, in the PSP-exclusive Tatsuya's Scenario) have some sort of countermove for it. One is an enemy immune to all attacks until you remove its barrier, and the other two will simply shrug off Armageddon before using their own Armageddon on you and wipe you out.

Persona 3

• Soma are items that restore full HP and SP to the entire party. All versions of Persona 3 give you a decent stock of them should you save them up, which makes surviving some of the harder bosses much easier. Persona 4 and 5 severely limit the amount of Soma you can get in a single run because of this, making the Soma almost Too Awesome to Use.
• There's a fair number of powerful Personas as your reward for maxing your Social Links:
  • Surt, the ultimate Persona of the Magician Arcana, is very self-sufficient for a level 50 Persona - it starts with Agidyne and Fire Boost, then it picks up Maragidyne, Fire Amp, and its signature skill Ragnarok. You can stack Fire Boost with Fire Amp to unleash some truly devastating fire attacks, and perhaps the only skill you need to pass onto it is something to cover its Ice weakness. He even gives a the Blazing Flame accessory, which allows the wearer to block Fire, so that you can stop worrying about Mitsuru's weakness being exploited. His Reload counterpart downplays this, since while he's unlocked after finishing Junpei's Link Episodes, his Heart Item is for one of his Fusion Weapons, and Saturnus has the Heart Item for Blazing Flame instead, he's still a formidable Persona on his own right.
  • The ultimate persona of the Emperor Arcana, Odin. His signature move Thunder Reign is the best of the 4 top tier elemental spells in the game because, in addition to the damage, it has 100% chance of inflicting the Shock ailment, which gives you 100% crit rate against the affected target with physical attacks. It's easily possible to defeat The Reaper as soon as Odin learns Thunder Reign in both the original Persona 3 and in FES by stunlocking him with alternated All-Out Attacks and passing turns (this doesn't work as well in Portable remake, but you can still cause Dizzy on him, making him act only once every 2 turns). Odin also learns Elec Amp (+50% Elec damage) and Spell Master (reduces SP cost of all spells by 50%). It's extremely easy to pass Elec Boost (+25% Elec damage, stacks with Elec Amp) to him. His only problem is the weakness to Wind, but that can be fixed by passing Null Wind to him, or using equipment to give you that resistance.
  • Chi You, the ultimate Persona of the Tower Arcana, is nothing special on paper, but being a good endgame Persona with two innate resistances and lacking any immunities is definitely not a bad thing, because he has Primal Force and Vorpal Blade, can learn Arms Master, and if you give him Resist Elec, Apt Pupil, and Enduring Soul (Firm Stance is also a good skill, but has the side-effect of not evading at all), he's one of the ideal Personas for the job against the superboss, especially if Orpheus Telos is not yet available. His Reload version is even more so, since that game introduces Boost and Amp passives for Physical skills and critical hits.
  • The ultimate persona of the Star Arcana, Lucifer (Helel in later versions). His stats are sky high, is naturally immune to all 3 Physical attack types (though Helel in the remakes only resists them), and learns Morning Star, which deals even more Almighty damage than Megidolaon with less SP. However, those are almost moot provided the player also has Satan; the "Armageddon" Fusion Spell, which deals 9999 Almighty damage to all enemies at 100% accuracy. While it will kill every enemy who isn't the Final Boss or the Ultimate Boss in the game, Armageddon in itself isn't a Game-Breaker, because it costs 100% of your SP to cast. No, what makes it this trope is the passive skill "Victory Cry" which replenishes all your HP and SP at the end of each combat (Lucifer learns it innately in the original game, but for Helel in the remakes it needs to be fused/equipped into). End result: You win everything. To top it off, it's fairly easy to fuse him with the aforementioned "Spell Master" which halves all MP cost. Yes, that includes Armageddon. Now, even going into combat in less than 100% SP lets you win everything as well. Portable lacks this feature because Fusion Spells are consumable items that you trade gems for in that game, and Armageddon requires a lot of gems to even acquire one copy. He's so powerful, Reload nerfs him by removing Victory Cry from his skillset and the Armageddon Fusion Spell is now part of the MC's Theurgy skills.
  • FES also brings the MC's ultimate persona: Orpheus Telos. This palette swap of your original persona is clearly specifically designed for the superboss because it resists everything but Almighty and ailments (the superboss will automatically kill you if your persona absorbs or repels any of her attacks, so resist is the best and ONLY possible option) and has great stats. The only spell that it learns naturally is Victory Cry, but most importantly, it can inherit every skill in the game. If you plan everything out right, you can have a single persona with the eight best attacks in the game. Mix and match to your heart's content to decide what eight skill combination is right for you. The catch? He can inherit every skill in the game, not just the best ones, and because he has an equal likelihood to inherit every skill, you'll spend hours wading through combinations with inferior skills, hoping for that one-in-a-million perfect combination that you just spent a few hours setting up. He's only available after you've maxed out all your Social Links in a single playthrough, and a worthy reward for all that effort.
• The Omnipotent Orb accessory is this game's version of Nocturne's Masakados Magatama, it makes you nullify every element except Almighty. There are only 2 ways of getting it, though: one is by defeating the Superboss, and the other is a 1% chance as a Heart Item from Messiah. Of course, using this against the Superboss will get you killed, but it doesn't stop you from destroying everything else on your path.
• Persona 3 Portable brings several new Game Breakers to the table, and it's likely that the Maniac difficulty was introduced in an attempt to balance the game for challenge-seekers:
  • Skill Cards. Think TM's from Pokémon, only 1) you can easily farm them and 2) there are no restrictions to what persona can learn what skill from cards. This means you can create Personas with skills that they couldn't have through fusion (ex a Fire type casting Bufu spells). While it doesn't have the unique, super-powerful skills (Morning Star, Black Viper, Die For Me, Thunder Reign, Ragnarok, stuff like that), it does have the "Absorb x attribute" skills. This makes it trivially easy to cover up weaknesses in strong personae. Even when the 2023 ports of Portable do not include manual inheritance, the customizability offered by Skill Cards is a great solace.
    • The Antiques shop also offers some Skill Cards in exchange for the gems you acquire from defeating Shadows. Really valuable passives offered include Resist [Element] cards which means you won't have to worry about patching weaknesses, Arms Master and Spell Master to reduce your skill costs, and the Growth cards (up to Growth 3!) that bestow Leaked Experience for levelling multiple Personas.
    • Also of note: Skill Cards can be reproduced for no cost. The Inari Sushi in the temple can take one card and make a copy of it after a few days. If you religiously go there every time he finishes, you can load up on very powerful skills you can put on any Persona you want. Or if you don't want to wait and have an excess of money, the Compendium will allow you to register a Persona just before it gives you a skill card. Gain one level to get the skill card, fuse that persona into something else, get a replacement from the Compendium, gain one level for another skill card. Lather, rinse, repeat.
  • Portable also introduces Direct Commands and Guarding. These in itself would not qualify as a Game Breaker, but consider that the PS2 versions do not let you directly control your allies and that P3 was designed with AI-controlled allies in mind. This is especially useful on bosses such as Chariot and Justice, who must be killed within the same turn or the one that is killed gets fully revived, as well as the Final Boss, who has a skill that repels all attacks; in the PS2 versions your allies will idiotically attack the boss, but here you can make them, you know, not attack until the repelling skill comes off. The ability to Guard rather than just Wait also lets you avert the loss of a party member in a pinch (especially if their weakness would have been exploited) or even avoid a Total Party Kill and alleviates a lot of the frustration in the original game.
  • Your party's Conditions only update once you leave Tartarus (and in your allies' case, if they die and then get revived). This means that you can ascend multiple Tartarus floors in one sitting and grind to your heart's content without worry of the Tired status cutting your expeditions short. Healing at the clock is very cheap, especially when your income from the Coin Shuffle Time cards far exceeds healing costs. Yes, this will put your whole party into Tired status the next day, but that doesn't affect social activities, and at worst you'll be out of battle condition for a couple of days, given a day of going to bed early and investing in condition-restoring services and items.
  • One of the NPCs you can rescue from Tartarus is Bunkichi, the old man from the Hierophant Social Link. Rescuing him not only lets you resume advancing the Link, but he'll give you a stack of 10 Homonculi (four in Reload), automatically-used expendable items that each block one Light or Dark attack that hits. Get this reward and you don't have to worry about instant-kill spells for a while.
• Reload further introduces new game-busting stuff, as the following listed below can attest to:
  • The game introduces combat characteristics that grant unique abilities to your party members. The real winner of this system is Yukari and her Healing Apex ability, which cuts the SP cost of all healing skills by 75%. For context, it takes until she learns Mediarahan to pick up a skill more expensive than the SP recovered by Invigorate 3, which can be granted to her via equipment. Combine this with her Theurgy gauge being filled by healing, which she can do pretty much every turn, and you get an even better healer than the Master of All protagonist and a top contender for the best party member in the game.
  • Thuergy skills are considered as this, for a wide variety of reasons:
    • Offensive-based Theurgies (Cyclone Arrow, Hack n' Blast, Lightning Spike, etc.) are already devastating as Limit Break moves but with Charge, Concentrate, and (de)buff Support skills, they can easily shave off very large amounts of the enemies' HP (including bosses) and all of them can even bypass their resistances and immunities. Special mention goes to Scarlet Havoc, which is capable of one-shotting any enemy (including Elizabeth) if fully charged, buffed, and beefed up with passives that increases the strength of Slash damage and the chance of landing Critical hits.
    • Fuuka's Theurgy, Oracle, becomes a lot more viable than in the previous versions: If the party is low on health, she'll cast Mediarahan on them for free. If their HP is high enough, she'll cast a party-wide Heat Riser instead. Its upgraded version, Revelation, is even more so, since it's basically a free instant Soma if the party is low on SP and a party-wide Charge and Concentrate if they're already buffed.
    • Akihiko's Theurgies are just as broken as Yukari's Combat Characteristic: Whenever he casts (Ma)Sukukaja on himself or is equipped with equipment with automatic buff passives such as Dragon Boots, Hanzo's Sandals or Evil Gloves, his Theurgy gauge charges up quickly, meaning that you can immediately end normal enemy encounters by just spamming one of his two Theurgies as early as his first turn.
  • Shuffle Time has also been altered to become similar to Persona 4 Golden: The cards are not face down while you're picking them, the Cup cards have more additional effects besides healing, and the Sword cards contain Skill Cards instead of weapons. It also contain Major Arcana cards, which grants great benefits while you're still in Tartarus, and once the Arcana Burst gauge is filled up by drawing them, the Minor Arcana cards would get a rank up. The Fool (extra EXP gain), Lovers (Fused Personas gain one extra level up), Justice (draw 1 more card), Devil (items dropped from Shadows or breakable objects are doubled), Star (also draw 1 more card), Moon (instant Soma effect), Sun (Fuse Personas who are 5 Levels higher than the MC's current Level), and Judgment (Party member with the lowest Level gains more EXP) are must haves to make the game a little more easier.
  • If you think Boost and Amp passives are only exclusive to elemental and Almighty skills, then not anymore: There are now Boost and Amp physical skills and critical hits. Combined with Arms Master (if a physical skill is used), Apt Pupil, Revolution, and Victory Cry (which can only be found in Orpheus Telos this time), you can easily mow down Shadows who are vulnerable to physical attacks like no one's business.
  • Resist Phys, a passive skill that not only negates a Persona's innate weakness to physical attacks, but also halves the the damage taken from all three of them. That skill seems to be just a three-in-one Resist skill at first glance, but Boring, but Practical kicks in when you slap it on a Persona of your choosing, especially if they're weak to physical attacks such as Decarabia and Saki Mitama. You can even trade its skill card at Maiyodo Antiques for a hefty amount of gems.
  • Saturnus, a late-game Star Persona, which can be unlocked after finishing Ryoji's Link Episodes, serves as a much stronger stand-in for Surt. He has innate immunities to Fire and Wind, has Inferno and Concentrate as his default skills, and can learn Fire Amp, Heat Riser and Repel Ice. Give him Fire Boost and Spell Master, and you have one of the better endgame Fire Personas in the game. He also has a Heart Item for the Blazing Flame accessory, which Surt previously had.
  • Messiah is way more busted here than in the original. Despite lacking Magic Skill Up and Oratorio from his previous appearances, he now has innate immunity to Dark and thanks to having Null Phys (which acts as Null Slash, Strike, and Pierce all at once), the MC can now shrug off any physical attack thrown at him.
  • The Phantom Thieves' initial Personas from the Royal Set 1 DLC, can only resist a specific element, have one innate weakness for each, and lack any immunities (Null, Drain, and Repel). Sounds unimpressive, right? Well, there's a very good reason they're listed as this, because they possess the unique Driver passive skills, which strengthens a type of attack (either physical or elemental) by 75%, and by stacking them with Boost (including Single/Multi-Target Boost), Amp, and Magic Ability passives, their overall base damage raises to a whopping 150-190%. And similar to the above Chi You, all of them are resist-only Personas, so you can just bring them along as great damage-dealing alternatives against Elizabeth if they're properly customized and given Resist skill cards.

Persona 4

Original

• Random skill changes. Kaiwan in P4 comes with Tetrakarn, which randomly changes to any other equivalent skill on certain days. Since Tetrakarn is a high-rank skill, it can change into skills of the same rank, which includes all of the Repel [Element] skills (including the ever useful Repel Phys), Brave Blade, Mediarahan, Spell/Arms Master, Victory Cry, and a dozen other high level skills (all of which would otherwise only be available by the last third of the game) as early as April/May.
• Black Frost is accessible by the midgame as a level 38 Persona. As one mandatory to advance Margaret's Social Link, he's hard to miss, but is well worth the effort to make anyway. Three immunities and no weaknesses make him a very good Persona already, and his innate skill set includes Agidyne, Fire Amp, and Mind Charge, giving him incredible boss-melting DPS. All this comes to fruition at level 43, and the plot-mandated Fool Social Link will already provide him with plenty of bonus experience to make it easier to hit that point. Once he's outlived the point where he remains useful, all three skills are still valuable ones to pass in fusion, especially since he's likely your earliest source of a -dyne spell and Amp skill.
• Trumpeter starts off immune to Dark, reflecting Light and Electricity, and absorbing Ice. As a Hexagon fusion, it is moderately easy to get the other three immunities, giving you a Persona immune to everything except Almighty and ailments. On top of that, Trumpeter gets the best buff and debuff spells and the strongest non-unique Almighty spell automatically. And you can get Spell Master on it for spamming Megidolaons all day (use Skadi to fuse Daisoujou, one of the components for Trumpeter). Unlike most other game breaker Personas in the game, which require some dedicated grinding, Trumpeter is fuseable at about the level you'll either naturally be or are recommended to grind to (depending on difficulty-based EXP gains) before the final run of the Normal ending. In Golden, you can equip Trumpeter and spend some time at Chagall to generate a Debilitate skill card, letting you impart that skill (which can't be transferred via fusion) onto anything you want!
• Similar to Trumpeter, Beelzebub has four immunities, so you'll only need three immunity passives to make it invulnerable to everything barring ailment spells and Almighty attacks.
• Both Metatron and Helel come close to Trumpeter and Beelzebub above in terms of resistances, though they can only be acquired rather late in the game. Metatron has only two innate immunities, but it learns Repel Ice and Elec on its own, and so only needs three more immunity passives through fusion. Helel on the other hand is immune to three, but learns Repel Wind on its own as well, in addition to learning other useful skills such as Megidolaon, Salvation and Morning Star.
• Incidentally, Daisoujou with Spell Master borders on a Game-Breaker by itself, as this makes its Light-based unique skill Samsara spammable, and with Hama Boost, Samsara has about 99% chance of instakilling anything not resistant to Light. While useless against bosses, this allows you to easily and MP-efficiently clear lots of normally-annoying encounters.
• Alice is the Dark counterpart to Daisoujou — her signature Die for Me! spell pretty much murders anything that has no Dark resistance, especially while augmented by Mudo Boost. She can be further refined with the help of one of her fusion ingredients: Nebiros learns Null Light to cover her weakness (and is far better than Endure Light) and Spell Master to make everything cheaper.
• Norn not only has Auto-Masuku which makes for a good base to fuse on Auto-Mataru and Auto-Maraku, but level her up enough and she'll learn Debilitate, making for a strong opener for boss fights. Even if you're not using her for stacking Auto-buffs, her fusion components (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) can easily bestow Wind Boost, Wind Amp, and Mind Charge to fully optimize her Wind DPS.
• Yoshitsune is the best physical attacker in the game because of his Hassou Tobi attack. Eight separate hits, though with light damage, will outdo single hit severe damage attacks like Primal Force. And it hits all targets to boot. Power Charged Hassou Tobi DOUBLES the damage output of a Power Charged Primal Force, the second-strongest physical attack in the game. Not to mention no weaknesses, and Yoshitsune is one of the most customizable Persona in the game (he only needs Power Charge and Hassou Tobi, which are both skills that he learns innately), meaning you can have a semi-invincible god slaughtering the field. Also, he has Heat Riser, which is essentially the combination of all three buff spells, and when fused on a certain date, he can also learn Debilitate, which is a combination of all three debuff spells. Combine it with the aforementioned Power Charge and Hassou Tobi and you will have a combo that could defeat Death with at least two uses of it. The tricky part, however, is getting to Hassou Tobi — even with a high-level to maxed-out Tower Social Link you'll still be a few levels off and need to grind to get there, but once you have it you're set to destroy everything vulnerable to physical attacks.
• The level up trick with the Mr. Pringles (King-type enemies that can summon other Shadows infinitely) is also a good way to have a high level. While, unfortunately, there's a cap for EXP, there's none for cash. If you have a Phys-Null (or Reflect) Persona on your main character, just let it summon its mooks, turn on Rush Mode overnight and wake up with a lot of exp (at 65k normally, 130k with both equipment pieces (each increasing your exp by 50%)) and a million worth of cash that you could use on a New Game Plus (you know, to summon your broken personae listed above). Though as for the two equipment pieces...
• Once Rise levels up enough, she can restore some of the party's SP after every battle, essentially giving you enough stamina to go through a dungeon in a single calendar day and reducing your dependence on paying the Fox for healing.

Golden

• One of the major Anti-Frustration Features is that you're allowed to choose what kind of skills your Persona inherits. This lets you create the perfect Game-Breaker Persona with ease and even plan fusions for Margaret's Social Link with much less reshuffling.
• Skill Cards return in this remake, allowing you to teach a Persona a skill of your choice regardless of its inheritance type. Not every single skill has a skill card (for example, Morning Star or Hassou Tobi), but skills like Victory Cry, Power/Mind Charge, Absorb [element] and Primal Force all do. Most of the time you earn Skill Cards through the Sword Cards in Shuffle time, but sipping a coffee at Chagall Cafe lets you earn a skill card from a Persona (indicated on their status screen). Marie can even register skill cards for re-purchase, though the best ones will cost a bomb (e.g. Absorb Physical going for 300,000 yen).
• Changes to the Shuffle Time in Golden now let you collect Arcana cards as part of the regular Shuffle Time rewards, instead of needing to hope for an Arcana Chance. This includes the minor Arcana cards from Persona 3. For the major Arcana, reverse Arcanas are no longer present, so you don't have to worry about getting a negative effect by chance. Triggering a Sweep Bonus by picking the table clean guarantees a Shuffle Time from the next battle, so you can chain Shuffle Times and Sweep Bonuses back-to-back to get a lot out of fighting random battles. Among these new Shuffle Time rewards, a few selections stand out:
  • The Magician card will upgrade any one of your Persona's skills to its next tier (for instance, Zio to Mazio, Regenerate 1 to Regenerate 2, Megido to Megidola). It will take some Save Scumming due to the low drop rate, but if you keep getting Magicians during Shuffle Time, you can upgrade Physical skills to game-breaking levels as early as the Bathhouse. For tanking, a simple Slime can become a Game-Breaker though this method. Slime is available as early as Yukiko's Castle, and is otherwise unremarkable apart from learning Resist Physical at the very end of its skill set. A Magician card will upgrade this skill to Null Physical, granting you complete physical immunity at the very beginning of the game. Once Slime has served its purpose, it makes for great fusion fodder to pass the skill on. You could do something similar in vanilla P4 by getting the upright Magician during Arcana Chance, but that was much rarer and less consistent.
  • The Emperor card now causes your currently-equipped Persona to level up immediately, before calculating any experience gained from battle. This lets you power-level your Personas for far less effort, unlocking potent skills for fusion early on. There's a reason it has a low drop rate during a Shuffle Time.
  • The Justice, Strength, Hanged Man, Chariot, and Fortune cards increase the Strength, Magic, Endurance, Agility, and Luck of the equipped Persona by 1 respectively. It will take some time, but enough use of these cards will push your Persona's stats far beyond what you can normally achieve by leveling up, and eventually you can max out the stats of a Persona of your choice.
  • The Cup minor Arcana refills some of your party's HP and SP, which can extend the length of a dungeon trip. Finding these can ease the Early Game Hell and finish a dungeon in fewer days, and they will serve you well until Rise learns her After-Combat Recovery skills.
• The "Ask for Help" feature. When playing online, you can try to call for help during battle from other online players, and it doesn't cost a turn; depending on the number that respond, your party's HP and SP will be healed accordingly. Getting SP healing in Persona 4 is both rare and prohibitively expensive, making you quit dungeons quickly or pay an arm and a leg to the Mysterious Fox. But Asking For Help can be done for free, at any time, and even if you get just one response, it's much more consistent (and dependable) than Shuffle Time healing with none of the drawbacks, so you can spend as much time as you want grinding and exploring without ever having to pay the Fox or using Chakra/Soul items. During the early game, where you don't even have that many SP to heal yet and Dia spells are cheap (and the Fox isn't even available), it can destroy the difficulty of Yukiko's Castle.
• The Golden Hand shadows are now worth a load of experience and money, but in exchange they are highly resistant to most sources of damage but highly susceptible to Almighty. The idea is to fish for Critical Hits to knock them down and then unleash a lethal All-Out Attack, but you can bypass the process by using the Megido series of spells — a situation where the normally Awesome, but Impractical skill really shines. Taotie is the earliest source of it, fusable at level 35. The moment you acquire it, you can farm the Golden Hand shadows with ease and earn great amounts of money and experience.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

• The Mission Control characters Took a Level in Badass upon coming to the Margin World, thanks to the Sub-Persona system. Unlike the combatant characters (who rely on a limited pool of SP to use magic), Fuuka and Rise instead rely on the regenerating "Leader" gauge that builds as you fight shadows. This makes Fuuka one of the most efficient healers in the game, as she can grant the party three turns of recurring healing for only 1/5th of the gauge. Equip her with a Sub-Persona like Kaguya and she easily outshines dedicated healers like Yukiko, Yukari, and Rei.
• The Luck stat plays a massive role in this game, with Naoto being one of the most broken party members due to naturally learning both multi-target variations of the series' signature instant death spells. She also has high enough agility to ensure she can strike first, with Ken being not far behind in that category, and she has no elemental weaknesses to boot. And though Teddie's a bit of a Low-Tier Letdown in this game, he has the highest luck score out of everyone, and can also be exploited for instant death. All three of them are also good contenders for Status Effects, also affected by luck, and unlike the main Persona games, are far more deadly and far more likely to work on bosses! Add to that the fact that sub-persona have their own SP values which replenish after fights. Once you get one with at least as much SP as your instant-kill move, you have free agency to use one at the start of every battle to thin the enemy numbers with nearly no cost.
  • In addition, the Stun status effect can bring almost any enemy to their knees when specialized properly. Stun status both makes an enemy unable to attack you and makes them unable to avoid attacks. If you use a skill that raises status success chance, then even a boss will probably be affected with only a few tries, rendering them useless for a few turns. Already a very powerful feat, you can then use Stagnant Air, which raises the duration of ailments to keep this going for a good 7 turns or more. And if you want to be especially mean, just teach your biggest damage dealer Death's Sickle, which raises their damage to enemies with status ailments... then give them a Link move. Curbstomping doesn't even begin to describe how vulnerable this makes bosses, and the really weird thing is it works on nearly EVERY boss.
  • Impure Reach is a passive skill that increases the chance of inflicting status ailments. What it also does is that it boosts the success rate of the Hama and Mudo series skills, as the game recognizes instant death as a status ailment. By the middle of the third stratum, you gain the ability to form Skill Cards out of your Sub-Personas, letting you make Impure Reach a permanent part of Naoto's, Ken's or Teddie's skill set and making them ridiculously powerful with instakills.
• Physically-oriented characters like Kanji, Chie, Aigis, Shinjiro, and Akihiko are highly valued because most of their abilities are Cast from Hit Points which are easily replenished, both thanks to Fuuka's healing and the HP/SP buffer given by Sub-Personas that's replenished after every battle. One of the most popular strategies involves equipping one of these characters with a Sub-Persona that has several of the various "Link" skills equipped, which allow them to add bonus elemental damage to every allied attack that comes after them. Kanji is a popular choice for this, as he has the highest natural strength score and naturally learns abilities that allow him to go first in battle, allowing him to maximize link damage. Junpei has less Strength, but has the Golden Gemini skill upon getting his ultimate Persona, which gives him a very high chance of executing any physical skill twice in a row (and the second is free). This includes Hassou Tobi.
• Aigis's Orgia Mode is cited as a FOE or boss killer. A damage multiplier for only two turns doesn't sound impressive, on its own. However, the thing that makes it so unfair to bosses is that it doesn't take up a buff slot^*Only three buffs and debuffs can be applied to a unit during battle, with newer ones overriding older ones, meaning you can have that, Shura Tensei^*Greatly multiplies damage in exchange for losing half of your max health every turn unless canceled by Shura Revert or getting K Oed, and it doesn't take up a buff slot either!, Heat Riser, Matarukaja AND Power Charge active for an even more powerful multi-hitting attack such as Danse Macabre on a thoroughly debuffed and preferably agility-bound enemy. If you throw Dragon Cry into the mix for Action Initiative, it turns this particular combination of Aigis into one of the best Linkers, and with the right passive skills, every successful follow-up attack will deal damage in the thousands.
• Yoshitsune returns from Persona 4 as a sub-Persona, retaining his signature overpowered Hassou Tobi attack, which now has increased base damage in exchange for now distributing 8 hits across all enemies randomly. Against single targets, all eight hits will converge on that one target. While Yoshitsune doesn't learn any other attack skills, he doesn't need them — every other skill he naturally learns is a passive that makes Hassou Tobi even stronger. ^note God's Cut passively raises cut damage, Warrior Title raises critical rate and nearly guarantees the user Boost for their next turn, First Star amplifies the damage if the user attacks before all other enemies (which can produce incredible results with Bestial Roar or Dragon Cry), and Heroic Gemini gives a chance of Hassou Tobi firing off twice in a turn. Add in the fact that no enemy in this game is immune to any element that isn't Light or Dark, and Hassou Tobi can decimate anything in the game, Almighty attacks be damned.
  • Second to Yoshitsune is Mahakala. While his unique skill Danse Macabre isn't as broken as Hassou Tobi, it has almost the same effect, bragging 5-7 hits across all enemies. Mahakala also learns Power Charge, God's Cut, Raging Fists, and Heroic Gemini, all of which increase Danse Macabre's power. It's a common strategy to field both Yoshitsune and Mahakala on the same team, doing massive physical damage every two turns (one to cast Power Charge, the other to use attack skills), especially if both Personas activate Heroic Gemini.
• Combine Immunity Buffer with Life Wall and you have a tank who negates most physical attacks they're intercepting. Use it on Aigis, who can negate elemental damage, and you have a very resilient unit. You can even give Immunity Buffer to Aigis via Skill Card so that she can tank effectively without a specialized Sub-Persona. The combination is also viable in PQ2 as Immunity Buffer can be inherited through fusion in that game.
• The P3 Hero's ultimate Persona, Messiah, gains Debilitate as its special skill, which is the ultimate F.O.E/Boss killer. Debilitate lowers all of the target's stats in one move, rendering even the worst F.O.Es virtually harmless. Use of this combined with other tactics described above can enable the party to defeat F.O.Es LONG before the game expects them to be able to, resulting in massive exp gain and massively powerful Persona cards, allowing them to break the game even further.
• The P4 Hero's ultimate Persona is Izanagi-no-Okami, and not only does it have no weaknesses, it resists everything that isn't Light, and is immune to Dark. In contrast, every other Persona has a weakness — Naoto's Yamato-Takeru is an exception with immunity to Light and Dark but doesn't have the same stats or resistance spread that the P4 Hero has. This makes the P4 Hero the strongest unit in the game (barring instakill shenanigans with Naoto or Ken), and that's before you even account for Skill Cards or Sub-Personas. Izanagi-no-Okami's semiunique skill is Heat Riser, the buff equivalent to Debilitate, and it's central to augmenting game-breaking strategies like Aigis's Orgia Mode as described above.

Persona 5

Original

• A bug present in both the original and Royal causes stat boosts from equipment to be applied twice. All the weapons and accessories listed below, such as Judge of the Dead? Their boosts are actually double what's listed in-game!
• All your Confidants (excluding story-mandated ones) now bestow additional perks or access to extra services to augment your daily life. Some stand out head-and-shoulders over the rest:
  • If you get up to the second rank of the Sun confidant, you gain the ability to repeatedly extort money from Shadows during negotiations. While there's a chance of the Shadow getting angry and attacking or summoning reinforcements, it's possible to get thousands of yen from a single battle. Even if you max out the link, provided the contact doesn't show up with "Show me the money", you can continue to exploit the demons no matter the Sun Link!
  • In a game where time is scarce, Kawakami's Confidant abilities are very valuable, giving the player additional time slots for certain activities or letting her take over time-consuming chores so the player can do other nighttime activities. This also means that you can have essentially an endless supply of coffee and curry, allowing you to easily clear dungeons on the first night you go (assuming the dungeon doesn't have any roadblocks that force you to leave for the night) since you should be able to avoid running out of SP (often one of the biggest reasons you will have to quit the dungeon for the night). Her biggest boon is her special massage service, which lets the protagonist do a nighttime activity after a day in the Metaverse, making a Palace or Mementos trip less of a time investment. This last boon is only given by maxing her Confidant, but it carries on a New Game Plus and you get to use it to its fullest extent.
  • Chihaya's Fortune Confidant comes with two great skills which, while expensive to use, save a lot of time.
    • Chihaya's Rank 1 boosts the total points earned on a social stat of your choice for the day for every activity done after receiving the reading. While this ability does involve some planning and foresight, it can be obtained early on in the game and paired with activities that greatly boost stats like taking a bath, watching a movie, feeding the plant, etc. it can allow social stats to be maxed earlier, and right before you encounter confidants with the Level 5 social stat blocks.
    • Chihaya's Rank 7 ability bumps up your closeness with a Confidant without using any time slots. Play your cards correctly and you can eliminate holdover periods, like with Sojiro's notoriously slow Confidant.
  • Once you initiate the Tower Confidant, you gain an ability that allows you to knock an enemy down with your Gun even if they aren't weak against Gun attacks. It costs a lot of ammo at first, but becomes more useful with later abilities from that Confidant, which reduce the ammo cost and allow you to hit targets that would otherwise be immune to Gun skills. With this, it's even possible to knock down The Reaper. Afterwards, you get the opportunity to use this very ability to win a previously Hopeless Boss Fight, yielding a Null Phys skill card. Not only is this a valuable skill to have (on top of being the only damage immunity passive skill card you'll ever find), it's also considered a mid-tier skill card, allowing Yusuke to duplicate it if his Confidant is Rank 5. With enough copies of this skill, you can make nearly any Persona Nigh-Invulnerable, considering how many enemies and bosses favor physical attacks.
  • SP is the fuel for all magic, it can be used to heal your fighters and effectively counter enemies. Thus, because it cannot be as easily recovered as HP, the drain on your SP often limits the amount of time you can spend crawling dungeons. However, with the SP Adhesive Bandage (available at Takemi's Confidant Rank 5), you can recover SP every turn in a battle, up to 7 at rank 3. That means if you purchase a bandage for every member of your party, while notably expensive (to the tune of at least 240,000 yen), it makes it so you can effectively traverse an entire dungeon in one calendar day, which is infinitely important in a game where time is as important as in Persona 5. Get Takemi's Confidant to Rank 7, and everything she sells is offered at half price, making it incredibly easy to fit the party with the adhesive.
  • Caroline and Justine's Rank 10 ability allows you to pay money to fuse Personas that are at a higher level than Joker, which would otherwise be impossible. With how easy it is to get money, this makes gaining access to top level personas trivially easy (except those which require unlocking first). Since Special Fusions usually require high-level Personas, fusing the material Personas and the final result may make this too costly... except for one particular Special Fusion. Rangda can be easily recruited by the time you max the Confidant, and Barong is just one level above the minimum needed to max the Confidant, so his fusion fee isn't astronomical. Yes, you can fuse Shiva almost right away! Although doing so will cost around 300,000 yen if you try it at the first opportunity, it's a fair bit cheaper than most other high-end Personas. Even better, rank-up fusions via treasures can turn Shiva into Satan.
• It's possible to circumvent the once-a-day limit of strengthening a Persona by fusing/deleting/itemizing/sacrificing it after strengthening and registering it, then resummoning it. Doing this enough times with sufficient luck (as stat point allocations on level-up are random) lets you max out the attacking stats of the Persona of your choice, making it a much better attacker than other Personas with high base level. The downside to this method is that it's going to cost a lot of yen, especially in the higher levels.
• A minor one occurs for in-class questions. If you're using the network features, you can see what everyone else answered before choosing. It's a sure bet that at least 95 percent of all players have chosen the correct answer. So it's less about seeing what everyone answered and more of a "here's the correct answer" button. Getting the questions right only provides a minor boost to Knowledge, but it basically makes the boosts a guaranteed thing.
• Certain bosses in Mementos avert Contractual Boss Immunity, which means you can use status-inducing spells on them. Enemies affected by the Confusion ailment cannot act, and have a chance to instead throw money at you. Normally, this isn't much of a moneymaker, since regular shadows only throw a few hundred yen at most, but Mementos bosses throw much more, potentially tens of thousands of yen per turn confused. By intentionally prolonging the fight, you can easily earn hundreds of thousands of yen with very little effort. This is best done with a Persona that has the skills Pulinpa, Confuse Boost, and a high Luck stat (which increases the chance of the enemy throwing money and how much you get).
• Swift Strike (which deals 3-4 light hits to all foes) is a very strong skill for how early in the game you can get it: just level 19 by fusing Matador (who else?), and Ryuji also learns it by the time you reach the fourth dungeon. It can deal damage on par with endgame attacks like Vorpal Blade, and is more consistent than other crowd-hitting attacks like Deathbound and Agneyastra. Don't be surprised if you end up passing it along to subsequent fusions, or if Ryuji ends up still having it when you reach the final boss.
• One-Shot Kill is an attack that does severe Gun damage and has a high chance to crit, but without the reduced-accuracy drawback that Miracle Punch has. It's first available on the level 51 Seth who learns Cripple that boosts its damage by 50%. On its own it can knock down targets that don't nullify Gun damage, and you can augment it even further with damage- and critical-boosting passives for boss fights.
• Itemizing Michael nets you the Judge Of The Dead, a 380-power revolver for Makoto that increases all of her stats by 10. And if you max out Caroline and Justine's confidant, you can craft this weapon as early as Level 51, turning Makoto into a crazy powerhouse for the rest of the game.
• Having trouble with the mouse puzzles in Shido's palace? Use a Hypno Mist before entering the designated rooms, which will put the enemies to sleep for quite a long time. You still need to solve the puzzles themselves, but this becomes a cake walk without the constant threat of death looming over one's head.
• Mementos is affected by the weather in reality. When a Heat Wave turns up, there's a chance Shadows will automatically be hit with "Burn"; in Pollen Season, it's "Sleep". But for three days in November and two in December, Flu Season arrives, which has a chance to inflict "Despair", which will automatically kill any enemy in three turns and prevent them from acting. The game-breaking comes from the fact that this includes The Reaper, who does not have Contractual Boss Immunity to the flu. Defeating The Reaper pays out a hefty 72,000+ EXP every time, no matter how many times you do it. Given that level 50 is around the average level the player should be at in November, it's possible to hit the level cap for every party member in around two hours, resulting in every party member gaining their strongest skills that would usually take tens of hours of grinding to achieve. Doing this can turn the whole endgame into a cakewalk, including turning the Final Boss into an absolute joke who can be taken down in as little as four turns. ^note It's recommended that you rank up the Star Confidant to Rank 9 to be able to escape on your first turn in case the Reaper doesn't have Despair and you're not prepared to fight him. This bug was fixed in Royal, as the Reaper can no longer be affected by Despair at all.
• Firm Stance halves the damage you take but also renders you unable to dodge attacks^note Hama and Mudo are exempt from this rule so you won't get instantly killed every time, though as a skill it is only available on a few specific late game Personas. The Divine Pillar accessory, obtained from beating the Reaper, does the same thing. When you combine the two, their effects stack, giving Joker ridiculous damage resistance before factoring the actual Persona's stats and bonuses from armor.
• Yoshitsune returns, and his signature move Hassou Tobi^note eight hits for light damage on all enemies, but becomes very powerful with Power Charge and an attack buff against defense-debuffed opponents is just as powerful as before. While he already has a handful of natural immunities and no weaknesses, it is possible, through careful fusion, to make a Yoshitsune who repels, nullifies, or drains all but two of the elements — which, in conjunction with Hassou Tobi, make him a nigh-unstoppable killing machine.^note This article goes over the process in-depth. The only downside is that since one of the Personas required to fuse Yoshitsune, Futsunushi, can only be fused after completing Morgana's Confidant, Yoshitsune can only be fused at the start of the final dungeon on a first playthrough.
• If you trek through Mementos on 24 December, you'll find the last two Treasure Demons in the game within the lower floors of the Sheriruth sector. They are some of the best Treasure Demons for varying reasons, and it's no wonder you only can access them this late in the game.
  • Crystal Skull, the final treasure demon, can be itemised into an accessory of the same name which grants +5 to all combat stats, on top of a large boost to evasion against magical skills. While it is only available when The Very Definitely Final Dungeon manifests itself, it isn't too difficult to make enough for everyone on the team (provided you collected enough black rocks), making it much more difficult for enemies to exploit their elemental weaknesses. The only drawback here is that it competes with the SP Adhesives for each party member's accessory slot.
  • Hope Diamond, the penultimate Treasure Demon, is easily the most useful of them in fusion, due to having a lot of incredibly useful passives. Being able to pass all three Auto-group-buff skills onto a Persona lets you tear through random encounters and have a great opening turn in boss fights, and the rest of its options are still incredibly helpful, running between Endure, Fast-Heal, and High Counter.
• The DLC Personas, by way of Bribing Your Way to Victory, stand out above the regular Personas you can access at their level.
  • Izanagi Picaro learns Null Phys at level 25 and Growth 3 at level 28. Once Izanagi Picaro gets these, you can pass them around to any Persona of your choosing, meaning by mid-game you can have a team of Nigh-Invulnerable Persona you don't even have to use to unlock their skills. His Secret Art Cross Slash isn't half bad either, dealing the equivalent of two highly accurate Assault Dives to a single target.
  • Kaguya is a monster. On top of having incredibly useful skills you can pass on through Fusion at an outrageously low level (Mediarama from the start, Diarahan at level 21, Repel Phys just a level later), she has nice resistances, one easy to fix weakness, and above all, her Secret Art Shining Arrows is essentially magical Hassou Tobi. It hits randomly between 4 and 8 times unlike Hassou Tobi's guaranteed 8, and cannot crit, but can do more damage because of damage-boosting passives that do not exist for physical attacks.
  • Messiah isn't too impressive a Persona despite what its high level would suggest, but itemizing it will give you the Lucifer Guard armor. Lucifer Guard sits at 250 defense and reduces all magic damage by a high amount, putting it only second to the Armor of Invincibility that needs you to itemize Satan to obtain. And you can make it as early as August for the whole party.

Royal

• The newly implemented Will Seed rooms restore a portion of the party's SP the first time you find them, making it much easier to manage SP in the early dungeons.
• The Crystal of Sin accessories obtained after finding all three Will Seeds in each palace all come with some hefty bonuses, and taking them to Jose in Mementos will make them even stronger.
  • The Crystal of Lust starts with Diarama and upgrades into The Ring of Lust with a unique skill called Champion's Cup, which serves as a combination of Diarama and Tarukaja. The Crystal of Lust is great for Ryuji in particular because he can be a 3rd healer for the Shadow Kamoshida fight, and having an attack buff after being healed allows the ring to more than earn its slot for the early and mid-game.
  • The Crystal of Vanity starts with a passive ability to remove all persona weaknesses just by wearing it, which is incredible for anyone but especially Joker. With this, you no longer need to worry about using resistance/immunity passive for covering weaknesses (saving you on a lot of Fusion planning) and have room to fit in other skills of your choice. You also can use Personas with multiple weaknesses more easily! After upgrading to the Ring of Vanity it gains Bleeding Dry Brush, letting you cast a single target barrier spell that absorbs non-Almighty damage, making it great for both plugging key weaknesses in a pinch and keeping a party member alive.
  • The Ring of Envy auto-casts Concentrate on the bearer, so whoever is equipped with it will have an easier time beating trash mobs in battle using their best all-target magic skills.
  • The Ring of Greed and Ring of Pride allows the holder allows to cast an upgraded version of Concentrate and Charge respectively. In this case, instead of being limited to casting it on themselves, they can choose anyone in the active party to give the effect. In addition, they also grant Attack Master and Defense Master passives respectively. These accessories are particularly useful for party members like Haru, Kasumi, and Akechi who otherwise join the party too late to gain Concentrate or Charge from the Jazz Club.
  • The Ring of Sorrow grants a skill that only does minimal damage but is guaranteed to knock down all enemies. The attack is Almighty-elemental, meaning nothing in the entire game can resist it or avoid it (unlike Miracle Punch). ^noteTake note that the closest equivalent of this attack is used by the Velvet Room Assistants when you fail their threshold and this skill is a Nerf in comparison to ones used in their fights as they can use the skill at any time.The caveats are that you can only use it if you start an encounter by ambushing the enemy, and it is unobtainable on a New Game as Jose cannot upgrade the Crystal until after the Final Boss, by which point Mementos can no longer be visited. But it's extremely useful in New Game Plus, allowing you to trivialize random encounters with a first-turn All-Out Attack or negotiation. That isn't to say that the Crystal of Sorrow isn't bad by itself, as it gives the Life Aid skill, which restores 8% of the wearer's HP and SP after each battle.
• Status effects have received a significant buff in this game, while the Technical mechanic was overhauled to be much more effective with investment: playing Billiards enough times makes Technical Attacks far more powerful and guarantees a knockdown. With the special book from Jinbocho, you can also unlock more status-element combinations that grant Technicals. The game even recommends statuses and technicals as the main strategy against the enemies with no weaknesses.
• The new Persona Trait, available at a certain point in Madarame's dungeon, is a specific passive ability present in each Persona with its own skill slot. Depending on their effects, they can make for powerful combinations with the normal skills. Among party members, Morgana's Proud Presence increases the effect of the party's healing skills, while Makoto's Gaia Pact increases the likelihood of various status effects to land. Joker himself has access to several powerful Traits with specific Personas:
  • Unending Fury (Zaou-Gongen) provides a 30% damage boost to Physical skills not of the Gun-element. Some of the best Physical-element attacks in the game are already great on their own, so giving them their own Boost/Amp middle ground produces no-brainer results.
  • Will of the Sword (Futsunushi) increases the damage boost from the Charge and Concentrate skills from 250% to 300%. This is pretty much to Gun and Magic Persona what Unending Fury is to Physical Persona. This combos very well with Royal's new item/accessories that allow your party members to cast Charge/Concentrate on Joker.
  • The above two Traits works incredibly well with Yoshitsune which turns the already powerful Persona into an unstoppable force. Very few enemies can stand to an Apt Pupil Charged Yoshitsune's Hassou Tobi with the 'Will of the Sword' or 'Undying Fury' Traits.
  • Vitality of the Tree (Attis) allows free use of skills that can normally only be used when surrounded. The ability to use Thermopylae (a full party Heat Riser which Attis will start with) at any time alone makes this extremely powerful, and keeping all stats buffed a breeze.
  • Ongyo-Ki's Demon's Bite doubles HP restored to the user. This normally isn't overpowered, but by passing it on to Maria, who learns a unique passive that restores 25% HP per turn and another that restores 15%, you get a Persona that heals 80-100% of Joker's health at the start of every turn (depending on how many other passive healing skills you stack). Combine that with Enduring Soul, Firm Stance and the party's Protect abilities, and Joker will become nearly impossible to kill.
  • There are Traits which reduce SP cost of specific spell types (Elemental, Healing, Support) by 50%, with certain high level Personas having stronger versions which reduce cost by 75%. Lucifer tops this with Allure of Wisdom, which reduces the cost for all spells by 75%. This stacks with the passive Spell Master, which also halves SP cost. Combining the two essentially reduces SP cost into 1/8th of the original, meaning Morning Star (Severe Almighty damage on all enemies) and Salvation (full heal and status cure on party) now cost a laughable 6 SP each, which can be recovered in a single turn with Invigorate 3 (restores 7 SP per turn). This makes SP management almost trivial.
  • Satanael is made even stronger with the trait Pagan Allure. This innate trait functions as a 50% boost for all magic damage, which stacks with boost/amp skills and gives Satanael an attack power to match his massive resistances. Combine this with his new passive skill, Tyrant’s Mind (further boosts his damage output and breaks the boosting cap), and Satanael can easily output more damage than any non-DLC Persona in the game. Most notably, thanks to Pagan Allure, Tyrant's Mind, and Magic Ability, he is the only persona who can have a skillset with multiple severe elemental skills at the same time (Blazing Hell, Ice Age, etc) AND have them do a comparable amount of damage to a persona with a skillset dedicated to maximizing a single skill with its respective Boost and Amp passives, giving Satanael an unprecedented level of versatility that cannot be effectively replicated by any other persona.
  • Wealth of Lotus (Lakshmi) allows buffs cast on allies to extend two extra turns. This doesn't seem like much but this also includes the three Auto-group-buff skills and with full application leads to a 5-Turn Full Party Heat Riser at the start of every battle. That alone is insane but apply this Trait to Orpheus F who has Neo Cadenza (50% Heal & Full Party Heat Riser) and that buff is reapplied just in case your fight was to extend beyond normal.
  • God Maker (Izanagi/Izanagi Picaro) increases the chance for your party members' Traits to activate. It's self-explanatory how good it is to have more chances to get off Ryuji's Raging Temper or Makoto's Gaia Pact.
  • Tag Team (Ariadne/Ariadne Picaro) allows Joker to use a consumable for free after a Baton Pass. This essentially gives you infinite use of the best and rarest items in the game after a meager weakness or critical attack.
  • And lastly, there's Country Maker (Izanagi-no-Okami/Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro), which boosts Attack and Defense based on how full the Persona Compendium is. This trait is a large factor in how Izanagi-no-Okami breaks the game so hard (see below), especially when combined with its signature three-hit Almighty Attack Myriad Truths.
• The Fusion Alarm system activates as soon as you've cleared the path in the third palace, and increases the effect of every service: fusions create buffed up stats and moves/abilities, gallows gives a massive experience boost, the electric chair yields even stronger items (all the strongest weapons armor and accessories from the original game can be made even stronger), and lockdown doubles the stat gain from burning incense. While the first three have a chance to trigger an accident (which will always happen the second consecutive attempt of each service in the same alarm) these can also bring some unexpected benefits of their own. Best of all, an alarm can trigger multiple times going through a palace or mementos, especially with a Celestial Reading from Chihaya.
  • Even the Accidents have a hidden twist during a Fusion Alarm. Any Persona fused during a Fusion Alarm will be "unstable", and using them for fusion/strengthening/itemization will guarantee an Accident. However, this may be what you want: any Persona made from an unstable Persona will have its original skills replaced by one of many pre-determined skillsets. These skillsets include things like every Evade skill, every Boost skill, a skillset built around inflicting Fear and Ghastly Wail^*instantly kills enemies afflicted by Fear, and so on. With liberal use of Save Scumming, this can result in some amazing fusion fodder or obtaining -dyne level skills 20 levels earlier than normal. Similarly, an Itemization Accident can result in equipment and skill cards that are normally difficult to obtain. A gallows accident will give the recipient Persona +5 stat points randomly without giving them any experience (an unstable gallows accident gives +10 instead), making it extremely easy to reach 99 in every stat (which one of the Thieves' Den awards actually requires you to do).
• Royal (potentially possible in the original game as well) introduces a risk-free infinite money farm in the third Palace that requires a couple of prerequsites but is worth the needed investment. Got plenty of time to farm money in Kaneshiro's Palace, at least a three ranks in Yoshida's Confidant and at least one SP Adhesive Bandage accessory? Put one on Makoto, and start attacking the Shadows in the entrance lobby area until you get an encounter with just three High Pixies. Kill two of them, and then knock down the third and start wringing her for money non-stop until she gets fed up. Rinse and repeat while keeping one High Pixie alive to continually knock down and hold up. There is literally no risk involved - all she can do is either heal herself, try to put one of your party members to sleep or summon another High Pixie. In fact, the first and third actions are actually helpful for keeping this strategy going, and the second action is basically useless since she can't exploit it in any way. Because High Pixie is purely a support shadow that is only a problem when paired with a different type of shadow that actually can attack, you can keep farming them for money perpetually as long as Makoto is regenerating SP, and killing any extras will net you a bit more money and experience. And there's the backup option of using a bullet to cause a knockdown just in case something unexpected happens or you don't want to waste time waiting for the one remaining enemy to heal herself.
• The stat gains from working out at the gym are no longer capped, meaning you can keep going there for the maximum benefit. If you collect the high quality protein and manage your time well, you can easily get Joker's health to the cap of 999 by the end game. Also, all gains to Joker's max HP and SP now carry over to a New Game Plus, allowing him to be practically unkillable right out of the gate.
• The Jazz Club is a new evening activity unlockable with Akechi's (now no longer plot mandated) Confidant, which can be shared with party members. For a measly 3000 yen, they get some sort of bonus based on the drink of the night: boosts to ability scores, extra HP and/or SP, or learning skills that aren't normally available to that character, such as Debilitate or Spell Master. On nights when there's a live singer, the bonuses are even doubled. What really drives this into Game-Breaker territory, though, is that all of the above carry over into New Game Plus. With enough investment, you can build Ann from a Glass Cannon into a Lightning Bruiser with more HP than Ryuji and more agility than Makoto, or give Yusuke a massive SP pool and high magic stat to turn him into a Magic Knight.
  • There are unique skills for Futaba on the original cocktail depending on how many times you visit. By the third visit she gains Support Boost 3 which gives a chance to trigger Masukunda, Marakunda, and/or Matarunda (yep a free Debilitate that activates randomly), and by the fourth visit, she gains Support Chance Up which activates Moral Support more frequently. Futaba would become a support powerhouse even before going into her "Third Tier" Persona mentioned below.
• Strength's "Special Treatment" ability is now in Rank 5 in Royal, meaning you can start to fuse high level Personas even sooner and even get Strength as far as Rank 8 as soon as you unlock "Special Treatment"^* Rank 9 requires the Player to make Bugs, a Persona unlockable for fusion after completing "The Lovesick Cyberstalking Girl" Request in Mementos. The new Rank 10 reward for Strength is a discount for "Special Treatment" so you can even save money while getting some of the best Personas the late game has to offer.
• One more treasure demon has been added: Orichalcum, which can be itemized into an accessory that gives +6 to all stats (+7 in an alarm) along with Evade Physical, one of the largest overall boosts that any team member can benefit from.
• The once hated Insta-Kill now awards experience and money on use. While it only works on enemies a good number of levels lower, avoiding going into battle drastically lowers the amount of time it takes to accumulate a good amount of money and levels. It even works with Chihaya's money-boosting fortune or Jose's augments. It only activates while dashing and enemies weak enough to be killed by it will have a green outline if viewed through the Third Eye, so the player can clearly see when it will work and only activate it when intending to do so. Best of all, insta-killed enemies still count as battles, meaning that they build up to more alarms in the Velvet Room at no cost. The formerly monotonous Mementos can become your personal Peninsula of Power Leveling! Not only that, since Insta-Kill now only activates when you're dashing (And thanks to Rank 4 of Chariot, that also means enemies will find it harder to notice Joker while he's dashing.), if you still want to grind enemies that can give out lots of money or have a rare item you want through a hold up, you can do so without any risk of the enemy getting a attack in or you being so high leveled that Insta-Kill kicks in.
• The new "Third Tier" Personas for the Phantom Thieves each come with unique skills that make the third semester a joke, even turning the dreaded Reaper into a pushover. It really makes the payoff for maxing the party members' Social Links very worthwhile:
  • Morgana's Diego gains Miracle Rush, a physical attack against all enemies with a high critical rate.
  • Ryuji's William receives Fighting Spirit, which is Charge, but for the entire party.
  • Ann's Celestine gets High Energy, which is Concentrate for the Party.
  • Yusuke's Gorokichi learns Hyakka Ryouran, which is a party-wide Heat Riser. It turns Yusuke from a situational attacker into a one-man buffer.
  • Makoto's Agnes gets Checkmate, which is Debilitate but for the whole enemy party. Combining her and Yusuke together makes the situation a lot harder for the enemies in the span of two turns (especially because Yusuke and Makoto are two of the fastest party members, meaning the two will get their moves off before anyone else can act).
  • Futaba's Al-Azif gives her Ultimate Support, which has a random chance of triggering in battle: fully heals all party members, cures all statuses, revives any unconscious members to full HP, and fully buffs the party's attack, defense, hit/evasion rate, and critical rate.
  • Haru's Lucy learns Life Wall, which is a party-wide Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, all in one. In other words, total invincibility to all but Almighty skills. This limits the attacking options available to almost all regular enemies, and limits the Reaper to Almighty attacks, which, at a high-enough level and good armor, aren't a threat (and can't crit the party, meaning he won't be able to knock anyone off their feet).
  • Akechi's Hereward gains Rebellion Blade, which does colossal Almighty damage to an enemy, and even more if they're downed.
  • Sumire's Ella learns Masquerade, which deals two severe physical hits to an enemy.
  • Joker's Raoul has Phantom Show, which inflicts sleep on all enemies with a near 100% success rate and only costs a measly 4 SP. This can trivialize random encounters with easy Technical knockdowns. Unlike the other third-tier Persona, he is DLC and thus if bought can be used as early as Kamoshida's Palace.
• Tsukiyomi Picaro, a DLC Persona, comes with the absolutely absurd boon of being able to itemize into Spell Master (or Arms Master during a Fusion Alarm) skill card. Both passives cut the required HP for a Physical attack and the SP for a spell in half respectively. Both are some of the best passive abilities in the game, and since you can summon this Persona from the Compendium for free, and the removal of being limited to only being able to itemize one Persona a day, you can hoarde these skill cards with enough patience.
• Izanagi-no-Okami and Izanagi-no-Okami Picaro, from a separate DLC pack, quickly gained infamy as an absurdly powerful Persona, even compared to Yoshitsune and Kaguya. Myriad Truths returns, dealing three hits of Heavy Almighty Damage to all foes, making it the strongest Almighty attack in the game; the passive skill Almighty Boost, learned at level 94, makes it 25% stronger. In short, it will obliterate virtually anything you point it at short of a boss, and after being backed up by a Concentrate boost and hitting the boss with Debilitate, entire phases can be taken down in one attack. While it costs 40 SP to cast, Okami can refund it after battle thanks to the Victory Cry skill that he starts with. Okami naturally resists all elements except Bless and Curse, making it easy to fuse him into Nigh-Invulnerability (especially with the St. Hermelin's Badge, an equip that Nulls Bless/Curse, effectively removing his only elemental vulnerabilities AND any potential instakill from Hama or Mudo skills). Finally, Okami's Country Maker trait raises attack and defense based on the number of Personas registered. Players with near or complete Persona Compendiums will truly feel like a God among men using this Persona, and even at the start of the game before you can reap the benefits of these boosts, you won't start encountering non-boss enemies who can survive Myriad Truths until about Kaneshiro's Palace. In addition, he provides some useful goods when itemized: the regular version yields the Shining Headband, which adds 2-3 points to each stat as well as Invigorate 3, making it a strictly better SP Adhesive. The Picaro variant gives you a Mediarahan (full HP to all allies) skill card normally, and Salvation (the same, but also removes status effects; note that this is the only way to get this particular card) under a Fusion Alarm, making surviving boss fights trivially easy.
• The "Legacy DLC Bundle" for Royal compiles all of the DLC from the original Persona 5, including a number of overpowered Personas and accessories (to increase money and experience earned, or increase the strength of All-Out Attacks, among others). And because the Personas are instantly registered to the compendium and can be taken out for no charge, this lets Joker have up to a level 90 Persona as soon as he gets access to the Velvet Room. The best part? The Legacy Bundle is free, meaning anyone who feels like breaking the game with no effort can do it as soon as they want. In particular, Messiah can be itemized now into the even more defense-packed (but less evasive) Sirius Armor as early as May. Sure, there are better armors, but you need to either get them from the new dungeon in the Third Semester or, again, itemize Satan. With the right DLC packs, you can finish Madarame's Palace with two of your party members with endgame protectors.
  • With the release of Royal on the other platforms, all of the DLC is free, adding the likes of Izanagi-no-Okami and Raoul mentioned below to the Persona compendium for maximum breakage. Accessories-wise, the Camera Strap (formerly from the Persona Q2 costume DLC) fulfills almost the same role as the SP Adhesive, providing a 10% heal and 10 SP per turn when enemies are ambushed (easy to do consistently with enough practice). This effectively trivializes SP management for Palace infiltration, given that SP items can just be saved for bosses, until the point when SP Adhesives are made available. The fact that the game gives more than enough to outfit the entire party from the moment DLC accessories are accessible (way before SP Adhesives can even be bought) is icing on the cake.
• The supposed Harder Than Hard Merciless difficulty can actually be easier than Hard difficulty for skilled players, thanks to changes made in Royal. Enemies generally take less damage and deal more damage, and damage from hitting criticals, weaknesses, and technicals are tripled. The latter applies to both the party and enemies, so battles become a matter of taking out the enemy before they attack. In addition, experience points and money gains are changed to be the same as easy mode, giving it an application for grinding. The caveat is that it can be hard to capitalize on for bosses which have little to no weaknesses, but contrary to Safety difficulty, Merciless can actually be switched off at any time.
• The aforementioned St. Hermelin Badge, from the Persona DLC, is this in Royal where it no longer costs money to get, especially in the multi-console rerelease where it's available by default. It nulls Bless and Curse attacks; in a game full of Hama and Mudo instakills where Joker going down in battle ends the game on the spot, it's obvious why this would be so incredibly useful, and even on non-Joker party members it cuts into the amount of healing and reviving that you have to do. On Akechi and Sumire in particular, it covers their weaknesses, making it even more useful.

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth

• Rangda is a level 45 Sub-Persona, accessible by the fourth labyrinth. The first thing you notice is that she's the earliest source of staple debuff Debilitate. The next thing you realize is that she can be used to pass this skill around with Blank Cards.
• Yoshitsune, as usual, with his broken Hassou Tobi skill. He's been nerfed significantly as he no longer learns any passives that improve this skill, meaning you'll have to do some work with fusions to make the most of Hassou Tobi. Not all is lost, though, as Yoshitsune does innately learn Power Charge and Heat Riser to jack up the numbers.
  • Multi-hit physical skills in general are some of the most valuable endgame skills you want, because they offer a raised opportunity to land a Critical Hit for a boost. Many pure physical skills also gain a damage bonus when used in Boost, creating instances of sheer damage. Not only does Danse Macabre make a return (albeit restricted to a mid-tier Persona), several multi-hit skills also show up to compete for second place. The best inheritable ones available include Myriad Arrows (hits a single enemy 6-8 times) and Aeon Rain (hits random enemies 3-10 times).
• Link skills are essentially Magikarp Power in an elemental attack. On their own, they deliver a fast, weak elemental attack, with a slightly stronger follow-up the next time someone hits the same enemy. This can be augmented with their respective passives: Double, Triple, Quadruple, and even Infinite Link increases the follow-up cap per turn, and Golden Link increases the damage done by each subsequent follow-up. Link follow-ups trigger on most attacks, so Yosuke's Kunai Backup, Akihiko's Rush Stance, or the end-of-turn strike from Brutal Slash provide extra Link opportunities. In one fell swoop you can deplete a half the health of an F.O.E. The P3P Heroine is the strongest character in this regard, as she learns up to Infinite Link and her unique skill is an early version of Golden Link (which gets stronger with her Ultimate Persona). While other characters like Ken and Koromaru do have a degree of specialization in Link skills, none are as focused as hers.
• Agility binds work on nearly all major bosses and F.O.Es and can make some really dangerous bosses almost laughable when their ability to land a hit or dodge is reduced to near-nothing. It also imposes a massive turn speed penalty, making them almost guaranteed to be the last to move.
  • On the topic of Binds, Akechi's unique skill, Sleuth Insight, gives him a good chance of inflicting a triple-bind on an enemy for the low cost of 2 SP. His Luck may be lacking, but this can be easily remedied with a Sub-Persona giving him Bind Arts or Bind Arts+. The skill's low cost lets him spam it with little repercussion until you get the bind you want, and this can utterly shut down a large threat or even an F.O.E. His Ultimate Persona upgrades it to Detective's Ban, which lets him triple-bind an entire enemy row so that he can do work on random encounters too.
  • Tying into Bind synergy is Bound Arts (and its upgrade, Bound Arts+), which increase the user's crit rate when they're attacking bound enemies. As long as you keep a bind down, these passives hand out free Boosts like no tomorrow, letting you continue to pile the pain on the bound enemy or set up free skills.
• Of the ailments at your disposal, Poison and Confusion are some of the most useful ones that can turn threats into jokes if they connect.
  • Poison damage in this game is consistently strong, sometimes dealing more damage than you can dole out yourself over each turn. It's also very useful for eating through the health of enemies protected by Affinity Barriers, and is effective on the first two labyrinth bosses.
  • Confusion prevents the enemy from being able to dodge or use skills as they randomly attack themselves or their allies. If they attack themselves, this also procs a Link skill follow-up.
• Shura Tensei, a buff skill that returns from the previous Persona Q game, remains incredibly broken. At the cost of half of a character's maximum natural HP after each attack (which can easily be recovered with Navi skills), their damage output is tripled. Like before, Shura Tensei lasts indefinitely and doesn't use a buff slot, so you can stack more skills like Power Charge, Heat Riser, and Dragon Cry to make the most of it. Firing off Links or boosted physical attacks in this state all but guarantees a win against the majority of enemies and FOEs in the game. It's disliked among many players because of how extreme the move is, both in risk and reward.
• Aigis is just as broken as she is in the first game with her Orgia Mode. Like Shura Tensei above, it doesn't consume a buff slot (though activating it will use up one of her turns). Give her Yoshitsune and unleash a Boosted Hassou Tobi under Orgia Mode after using Power Charge, especially with Heat Riser in effect on her and Debilitate on the enemy, and she can easily start dishing out a total of 15,000+ damage per set.
• Did you dislike the fact that magic wasn't viable in Persona Q? P3MC's unique passive ability, Fool Card, gives a 1.5x boost to all magic damage except Bless and Curse. To put it into perspective, this is the equivalent of six "Element Turbo" passives (all of which are inaccessible until levels well above what you're expected to be at for the endgame) in one slot. His endgame upgrade, Judgment Card, shoots this up to 1.85x. They made his Magic extremely low to try to balance this out, but he still outdamages specialists with far higher Magic than him. Aside from that, his Luck is still excellent, and his Strength and Endurance aren't half bad either, and he gets first dibs on Heat Riser. He can pretty much do anything you want him to.
• Joker's ultimate Persona, Satanael, gets immunity to Bless and Curse and resistance to everything else, a remarkable step up from the rest of your party, even the other games' protagonists. With this, he becomes tankier than most other party members before you account for Sub-Persona customization. If you're playing on Risky difficulty where he's a mandatory party member and his death is an instant game over, his increased survivability greatly reduces the difficulty of the endgame.

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