Nothing is easy in the Shin Megami Tensei universe, and these bosses serve to drive that point home.
Shin Megami Tensei
- The bosses in the early-game of Shin Megami Tensei I are mostly only dangerous if you go in without max health and at least a couple of demons as backup. Once you get to the Echo Building and fight Douman, unless you come in with Cerberus, it basically becomes an RNG fiesta as you simply hope that he doesn't hit you with Shibaboo, has a chance of binding multiple party members, and if he does, it misses on a character that can cure the rest of them. If he gets your entire party, all you can really do is let him pound you until one of your characters get naturally cured— hopefully before he kills the three heroes.
- You make it past Douman. Great. After one rather easy Wolfpack Boss, 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 god of thunder, takes Douman's tricks up to eleven 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 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 resistance to status effects, you're in for a bad time.
- The bosses in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne are generally Nintendo Hard, but Matador is the first boss that really gives you an idea as what kind of lengths you'll need to go to in order to beat most of the bosses in this game. Not only do you need to recruit and fuse a team that is specifically resistant to one element, but you'd be in a far better position with a whole-party-heal spell in tow. More importantly, Matador teaches you how useful and dangerous buffs and debuffs are in this game - and the rest of the series - which are normally considered Useless Useful Spells in RPGs, but here are vital for your survival, since his Red Capote skill maximizes his evasion, and if you can't offset it with buffs or debuffs of your own, you'll lose a lot of Press Turns from missed attacks.
- Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
- Mitra, the endboss of the second sector, takes up this role. Two of his attacks are particularly devastating: The first is Light of Order, which instant-kills one demon without fail, forcing you to either swap in demons or waste time reviving and resummoning them (which are two separate actions, unless you have a Summon Stone by chance or certain spells that your demons won't have yet). The other is Mabufudyne, a third-tier ice spell that hits the entire party, when you're lucky to have Mabufu (ice, first-tier, all enemies) and Bufula (ice, second-tier, one enemy) at this point; having demons and armor that resist or are immune to ice is a must if you want to finish Mitra alive.
- The boss of the fifth sector, Ouroboros is there to show you the meaning of true cheapness. She resists both physical and bullet attacks and has 3 spells, Wild Thunder is a unique hit all thunder spell, Disaster Cycle causes random ailments to you and your demons, and Mahama, a hit all light luck based instant death spell. Oh, and she also regenerates every round. Ouroboros will teach you 3 things. First, you NEED to to use buffs and debuffs to inflict more damage or her regeneration will drag the battle for too long. Second, you won't defeat her with just any demon, if it's weak to thunder/light it will die, if it relies on physical/bullets attack it's useless. You HAVE to prepare a strategical team just for this boss (in this case, demons that can use buffs/debuffs, hit her fire weakness and heal status). And third, you PRAY when the boss uses her signature unblockable attack, cause if you are unlucky, her Disaster Cycle will cripple your entire team (Later bosses have even worse spells). Heck, if you are Born Unlucky she might even petrify the main character—an instant Game Over! This is just in the first battle, by the way. The second time around, she uses Disaster Cycle on almost every turn.
- In Shin Megami Tensei IV:
- The Minotaur is the first "real" boss, so its attacks are much more varied and aggressive. Its War Cry attack can lower the attack and defense of your whole party, which he will immediately take advantage of by unleashing his strong physical attacks. Like Matador in Nocturne, you will die if you haven't gotten used to using buffs/debuffs yet.
- And if the Minotaur didn't wake you up, Medusa will. She is the boss shortly after Minotaur and she doesn't need to rely on buffs or smirking to cause damage. Her regular attacks alone can cause medium damage, which is a decent chunk at this point in the game, and uses Zionga at a point where you likely will not have access to decent equipment or demons to resist electricity or even have the second tier of elemental spells yourself.
- Minotaur and Medusa also collectively serve to wake the player up to a bigger concept - demons are disposable. The two bosses have very different offensive and defensive weaknesses, so a party that can handle Minotaur almost certainly won't stand a chance against Medusa. This isn't Pokémon, you don't owe your demons anything. As soon as one isn't useful, fuse it into something that is, or you're going to have a bad time.
- The Terminal Guardian might not be too much of an issue the first two times you fight him, but in the third fight he busts out an Ose who will kick your ass if you aren't either sufficiently leveled or have a decent team that resists physical attacks. Ose has Blight, which deals ridiculous amounts of physical damage to everyone and can poison at a fifty-percent success rate, and he also has Dekunda to prevent debuffing from being useful. If the lesson doesn't kick in here, then he will show you that he means business in the sixth battle. He sends out Kresnik, Lanling Wang, and Cu Chulainn, all of which have no weaknesses and powerful skills. Appropriately, the regular boss battle music plays while fighting these three since the Terminal Guardian is not screwing around anymore.
- Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse
- King Frost, the boss of the Fairy Forest. Although the game uses this fight as a demonstration of the Assist Attack, which gives you a free turn right off the bat, you're on your own for the rest of the fight, and the first thing King Frost does is use Smile Charge. He gets the Smirk status which neutralizes his Fire weakness, and causes his Signature Move King Bufula to also inflict a defense debuff. Essentially, it teaches the player (via the hard way) about preparing for specific bosses and being diligent with fusion and recruitment.
- Ose shows up as a midboss in the next dungeon, but lacks any weakness to damaging skills. This makes overpowering him the hard way a little tougher, but his weaknesses are to ailments like Charm and Bind — a reminder that such skills are still useful in (mid-)boss fights.
- Titan proves to be this in a similar vein to Ose, he is a proper boss with no elemental or physical weakness, but instead does not resist ailments. A rare reminder that even some bosses are vulnerable to status ailments.
- Shin Megami Tensei V
- 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 feeding the Tree of Knowledge.
- The second major boss, Nuwa, exists to make sure you know how to change the protagonist's elemental resistances with Essence Fusion. She has a +7 Force affinity and multiple powerful Force attacks, which the protagonist happens to be weak to in his default kit. Haven't changed his resistances yet? Prepare to be oneshotted.
Persona
- Persona 2
- The closest thing to this trope that Innocent Sin has is the boss fight of Ixquic and Belphegor. It is the very first time that the player has to fight two opponents at once - as opposed to just one - and both of them are at a significantly higher level than your party. Belphegor has a ton of HP, multiple resistances with no weaknesses, and he has Poison Breath which affects the entire party and does exactly what its name says. Ixquic on the other hand, is weak to Light and Sword attacks, which means that either you set Tatsuya against her or spam the Light Smasher Fusion Spell. In any case, as long as she's there you can't do any meaningful damage to Belphegor. To top it all off, both of them deal very high damage for your level to the whole party, which means that you must have a devoted healer, thus putting a damper to your much-needed Fusion Spells.
- Eternal Punishment has the first JOKER boss, Tatsuya Sudou. Up til that point, the bosses were Early-Bird Cameo mooks that you could easily defeat with only three party members. For this fight however, you get five party members, with the fifth one being at least level 50. Sudou starts the fight by summoning four mooks that you won't be seeing for another ten levels, which deal huge damage for your HP at the time as well as Freeze and Shock Ailments. And then there is Sudou himself; other than dealing very high damage for your HP, he also has Old Maid, which forces Demonic Possession to a random character during your own turn and forces said character to use the non-elemental spell Joker on every other party member based on their own stats. In this fight the Crutch Character becomes a hindrance, because if Old Maid hits him he can wipe out the rest of the party. The only way to counter this move is to have everyone defend, but this leaves you helpless against the mooks and halts your progress. Overall, it's not rare to end this fight with nothing but the level 50 guy.
- And if the first JOKER didn't do the trick, the next will. JOKER Ulala comes right after the first one, and for this fight you're back to three party members. This JOKER, other than the previously mentioned Old Maid, also has Gigantic Fist, which deals Large damage to one enemy (a.k.a. more than you can take at that point), can inflict ailments that will almost always work - once again screwing your Fusion Spells - and a powerful Magic attack that will reduce your entire party's HP by a huge margin. On top of that, this boss has the exact opposite weakness than what you'd expect from her initial Persona. In addition, you can't leave the dungeon before the fight to resupply, which limits your options for dealing with the ailments. Add it all together and it becomes a long and arduous fight of endurance and you'll be grateful when it's over. However, Wall of Air, the key skill to making her trivial is on two different persona you can make up, and the rest of her attacks become manageable after that. Furthermore, the Rainbow Gleam for Iris can deal great damage to her after said wall spell is up. She's a wake-up call in the sense of "you're going to have to do some research and learn what works and what won't, even if it requires a retry" that modern Mega Ten is known for.
- Persona 3
- Rampage Drive is among the first Tartarus bosses in the game, and the last boss of the first block(Floor 14), but it seems specifically designed to counter your party if you fight it as soon as possible. It's immune to all physical attacks and resists fire, and Junpei (who has both) is stronger physically. It also has Mazio, a multi-target electric spell... and Yukari happens to be weak to electricity, in a game where exploiting elemental weaknesses messes with the characters's turns on the attacking side's favor. To make matters worse, it has both Assault Dive and Tarukaja* , and Assault Dive alone can wipe out a party member from near full health (and if the main character dies, well...). It's not a One-Hit Kill, at this point it's just that strong. To survive it, Rakukaja* and a Persona with good Endurance is almost a necessity, and the compendium isn't available yet if you face it early, effectively forcing you to be smarter with your fusions. It's the first boss where you use the main character's ability to change Personas to its fullest potential* and at the same time it shows how important for your party the Tactics command really is; if you don't balance attacking with healing and support skills, get used to Igor's remarks.
- The Change Relic on Floor 36, near the end of the first half of Arqa Block(which you can reach prior to the Empress and Emperor, about a fifth of the way through the game). Up until now, any enemy that isn't easily pummeled to death by exploiting Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors is handled with little trouble by exploiting the party heal of the Cadenza spell. Change Relic has no elemental weakness, and its wind magic can hit every party member for a good chunk of HP, or just hit one target for a potential One-Hit Kill. Then there's Poison Mist, which poisons your entire party, putting you on a very fast clock if it hits early. This is the point at which savvy players realize that sometimes, there's no substitute for good old-fashioned Level Grinding.
- If you didn't level grind for the Change Relic, the game punishes you with Emperor and Empress shortly thereafter. They're not especially difficult if you're adequately leveled and prepared, but they'll destroy you if you're not. And there's a series of lengthy cutscenes between them and the most recent save point.
- And then there's Hierophant. It has a multi-target attack that put your party members in Fear status. Fear causes them to skip turns, makes all physical attacks against them criticals, and makes them vulnerable to a One-Hit Kill from Ghastly Wail. He also attacks with Lightning magic, which the Required Party Member is weak against. Me Patra Gems help with the Fear effect, but it's still very possible to die simply because the Random Number God decided to be a dick.
- Persona 4
- 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 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 Nerfed in Golden, where it's she who becomes weak to Ice instead of her assistant who becomes weak to Electricity, but she remains a challenging Early-Bird Boss.
- The Superboss of Yukiko's dungeon, the Contrarian King, is meant to test your knowledge of fusion. It attacks with strictly physical attacks 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 for the Contrarian King to land a Total Party Kill right off the bat with that move. The only way to really beat it early on is to fuse a Persona that resists physical attacks.
- 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 Dekaja can be a life-saver note and you need to use debuffs yourself. Just like Shadow Yukiko, Shadow Kanji got Nerfed in Golden by giving weaknesses to the minions, although unlike Shadow Yukiko, Shadow Kanji has no weaknesses himself, preventing you from using All-Out Attacks.
- 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 Updated Re-release 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 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 Abaddon, Fafnir, and especially Superboss Lavenza will punish you later.
Devil Survivor
- Devil Survivor
- The first real fight with the Wendigo. The first time you see him, Amane is there and makes short work of him. The second time... well, let's put it this way; according to the Death Clock and Laplace Mail, if nothing changes, he's supposed to wipe out the entire party, and they weren't kidding. Take some time to get prepared before you face him, or you'll regret it.
- The fight against Beldr, in addition to being That One Boss, is the first "Bel" enemy you face and warns you that the others will also require specialized tactics to beat.
- The first battle against other tamers teaches players the value of AUTO skills.
- Devil Survivor 2
- On the first two days, the player will usually face off against demon teams who don't pose much of a challenge. By the third day, Botis will actually fight you, and he's a mixture of this trope and Early-Bird Boss — a level 37 enemy with Ziodyne when the player's teams are roughly level 20 means you're severely outmatched. It's possible, but very tedious, to defeat him despite the odds; he serves as a reminder that sometimes the mission's main objective doesn't mandate fighting everything in sight.
- Over the first two days, the player might occasionally find some stray human enemies who don't pose much of a challenge. Ronaldo Kuriki gets introduced on the third day as well, and he's certainly no pushover. With a well-rounded team that has very few weaknesses to exploit and the first instance of the Drain skill, he can take down a lot of your units once he begins actively engaging your teams.
- Denebola in Record Breaker, in addition to being a Time-Limit Boss, is the first of the Triangulum that you face in their arc of the game and warns you that the other members will require specialized tactics to beat, just like the Bels.
Spinoffs
- Super Kamoshidaman in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth really hammers in how much bosses have been buffed since the previous game. After giving you a false sense of security with a Zero-Effort Boss first form, Super Kamodshidaman attacks with two carrot 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.
- The Immoral Beast in Catherine is the second boss of the game, but it will take a player off guard. It is surprisingly fast, has a move that reverses the controls, and, more or less, is the first time a player really has to think on their feet. Making a wrong move can easily spell doom. Not only that, but there are trap blocks, which one can easily forget about and get skewered by.
