Why Persona 5 Royal’s Hardest Boss Is Easier On The Highest Difficulty

Most of Persona 5 Royal’s changes to the original positively affected gameplay and generally made battles easier. The one exception is P5R‘s Okumura boss battle, which can feel nearly impossible at first. It’s not uncommon for the fight to take multiple attempts, even leading some players to put the game down out of sheer frustration. But there’s a simple, yet completely counterintuitive, way to make Persona 5 Royal‘s Okumura battle much easier: change the difficulty to Merciless.

Okumura sends out wave after wave of robot cronies – some of which he orders to self-destruct – before players can reach him. The battle prevents All-Out Attacks for the first time in the game, even when all enemies have been downed. Persona 5‘s multi-character Showtime attacks, too, are unusable, and the whole battle is limited to a 30-minute timer. These features do make the boss challenging, but they were also in place for the much easier version in the original Persona 5. The new additions are what make P5R‘s Okumura truly difficulty.

To get to the next level of robots (and, therefore, eventually Okumura himself), each wave has to be beaten before any of them flees. This means the pressure is on to quickly do as much damage as possible with the party’s Personas. Making matters worse, Okumura constantly boosts his robot workers’ defenses, and each wave consists of the same kind of enemy. This means only one or two party members can attack their weakness at a time, and the Baton Pass has limited usefulness. The best way to take advantage of the robots’ weaknesses, then, is to serve massive amounts of damage with each attack, and that’s most easily done by changing Persona 5 Royal‘s difficulty to Merciless.

Persona 5 Royal: Merciless Difficultly Makes The Okamura Fight Easier

One of the key features of Persona 5 Royal‘s Merciless difficulty is that single blows deal more damage, whereas Normal difficulty encourages repeated Baton Passes. This makes Merciless ideal for taking advantage of foes’ weaknesses in a hurry, especially without the bonus damage offered by All-Out Attacks and Showtimes. Of course, Merciless difficulty warrants caution, since enemies also deal more damage, but there are ways to mitigate this: The Ring of Gluttony, for example, upgraded from the Crystal of Gluttony by Jose in Mementos, contains the skill Vault Guardian, which increases allies’ defense for three turns.

Still, the Merciless strategy is just one part of this boss battle’s ideal approach. As far as party members go, having a designated healer will become very useful as the fight wares on. Morgana and Haru are must-haves, while the fourth is flexible (although Ryuji can be especially helpful, if his abilities increase the likelihood of his attacks shocking enemies). It’s also a good idea for Joker to have Personas with attacks that deal Bless and Curse damage, not Insta-kills. With these preparations and after switching to Merciless mode, knocking Okumura – arguably Persona 5 Royal’s toughest boss – off this throne becomes less daunting.

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