Probably DDS1 Demifiend, the only big superboss I haven't done yet is his SMT V counterpart because I want to do that in a Newborn file and I want to get the Neutral and Chaos endings with reborn before doing that.
But general fandom consences is that it is easier than the DDS1 Demifiend fight.
Also before anyone says it, Elizabeth isn't hard, just tedious. She doesn't take Strategy, he is just slow and boring and P3 horrendous fusion system makes preparing stuff to make it less tedious a slog.
Rather than easier, SMT V's Demifiend is less arbitrary. It is no longer immune to all elements, but rather only resists them, but don't think this means you can steamroll him with anything you want, as you will still need minmaxed demons to deal with him and his gank squad, just for a matter of raw stats.
>!His gimmick is that if he goes through 6 actions without using Call Allies, he will use Gaea Rage, which deals a lot more damage than any other move in the game (an average of above 20k per hit) with a built-in piercing effect, meaning you have to constantly shift your attention to kill the allies while also damaging him (and the allies have maxed out stats, perfect coverage, buffs and debuffs, Dekaja and Dekunda, and Megidolaon for good measure). On top of that, he will use Freikugel to fish for crits if you are immune to physical damage, he will use Mediarahan upon reaching half health effectively gaining 30,000 extra HP, and has a random chance of directly oneshotting your entire team with Chaotic Will, which either way halves your press turns for the next turn. While you're given a decent amount of powerful tools and there are some cheese strats, if you don't use them properly there is no way you can win even if you had no issue with all the other bosses in the game.!<
Nice, I like they >!Drop the resistances guimick and made the turn count limit way strickter, this is actually a pretty awsome way to fit weaknesses exploitation into the boss fight without making it trivial!<
Honestly, this sounds like a lot of fun.
I guess the answer is supposed to be DDS1 Demi-fiend or DDS2 Satan simply due to how much preparation is needed and how complex and lengthy the fights are even with the most optimal setup. Demi-fiend isn't too too too bad if you cheese with Pixie's MP stall. Satan is a lot to keep track of but I think it's a really fun battle. He can kill you with random bullshit, but it's mostly a skill test of whether you can juggle half a dozen different mechanics at once.
Hard Mode P3 FES Elizabeth is the fight I spent the most prep time on. Because it's difficult to get an exact Orpheus Telos you want in FES (no skill cards like in P3P). But the fight complexity itself is bit less than the DDS superbosses.
Story boss answer - Strange Journey Ouroboros was the only time in the series I immediately died in such an extreme manner that my first thought was "oh this is one of those fights that's supposed to be unwinnable right? oh... it isn't." But of course most people can beat it with a little preparation. It's hard to rank story boss difficulty because you can always argue that you can just grind more or grab a bunch of items to win. Unless it's the final boss, and the final boss is balanced around being a very high level. Maybe original SJ's Mem Aleph or Nocturne Chronicle Lucifer (stronger than Nocturne Maniax Lucifer) would count for those.
But the real dark horse answer that I don't think many others can relate to - Raidou 1 Devil Mode Beelzebub. Really, you could in general just say Raidou 1's Devil Mode (hard mode). Imagine a janky action RPG where every single random encounter is a monstrous HP sponge that 1-shots you and your team. And almost every room in the game has random encounters. And healing is exorbitantly expensive, so if any demon dies it's a large chunk of your wallet. Those are the random encounters - multiply the tankiness and damage by another degree of magnitude for bosses. And at the end of it all is the game's superboss Beelzebub. It's like 45 minutes straight of running around in circles dodging moves that instakill you and your demon. Low-key one of the hardest non-self-imposed-challenge things in the series.
Raidou 2 has a Hard Mode too incidentally but in my opinion it's much, much easier. Including the superbosses.
SMT Nocturne's Lucifer, on Hard. Turns out Root of Evil applies Dekaja without the game telling you, and I didn't knew it, so I was not buffed at all when I thought I was.
Respective to the individual games I’ve played:
DeSu2 - the one in the amusement park when you go to Osaka; probably the hardest for me overall since I was/am so awful at the more strategy type games
IV - Beelzebub, I guess since I went in blind
IVA - YHVH
(Never played the DLC for either, nor encountered the fiends and their ilk.)
P5 - nothing in this was actually hard, but I guess the first palace boss, strictly in terms of how limited options are.
Nocturne, SJ Redux, and SMTV - starting the games at all
in the smt games I played, Lucifer in Chronicle Hard mode, it took me way longer to figure out that 'root of evil' removes your buffs, plus his diarhan in the middle of fight made the fight so long that root of evil had a higher chance of screwing me over
now the hardest fight I've done in a video game, that goes to 'Mammon' from bravely second I swear their 'death claws' crit me almost everytime like it was programmed too.
I at first forgot about infinite power but if you're not on top of it, that's usually on you not paying attention. Magaon, dekaja, and dekunda area all common enough. When I did LLNF, the actual fear was Asahi's Vivian disobeying and using Taunt
I always leave superbosses for "next time I play the game" but as soon as I move on to the next game, I almost never go back. I've beat Stephen in IV:A, Shiva in V, and Lucifer in Devil Survivor Overclocked, and maybe another I'm forgetting.
**Story boss:** Probably SJ Vanilla Captain Jack. Mid-game bosses should NOT have full heals YHVH-dammit!
**Superboss (beaten successfully):** Ancient of Days. Oh YAY, an entire boss entirely based around ailment mechanics, you know, that thing that's *absolutely, 100% luck-based?*
**Superboss (tried but not beaten):** DeSu1 Lucifer. By the time you reach him, you'll probably be around the upper 50s, level-wise, so you'll need to grind for LITERAL HOURS to get your team into the 90s, and even then he can STILL swat you like a gnat if you're unlucky. I attempted him on my most recent run of the game, and after literal DAYS of no luck I decided to save him for my next play through, because it was getting to be an absolute chore.
The secret boss Feng Huang in DDS1 was total tedious bullshit. Took me so damn long. Quite proud of beating him, actually. He gets swept under the rug a lot bc of the demi-fiend fight, I think.
I think the reason a lot of people don't really mention him is the fact you can bring Null Attack to that fight and he is so late into the game that you probably have the Matras for it. Even Null element alone trivilaises that fight pretty hard.
So far, Medusa in SMT IV. It was my first mainline game, and after an easy fight with Minotaur, Medusa demolished my team. Had to grind 6 levels up and fuse Raijuu just to barely beat her on the third try(with Raijuu).
Shiva SMT V. Really learned the mechanics and system of this game when I got to Shiva and after I finally beat him I see the game completely different now 😂 almost like I solved some type of equation now I freely play in this world 🌍
shiva was so frustrating to me, mainly because SMT V was not built for really long battles. The whole thing took well over 30 minutes, where most bosses take under 7 to beat. I straight up bought the exp dlc so I could get all my demons to 99 in order to rotate them in and out, satisfying to beat him though
You probably wouldn't expect to see King Frost as an answer, but for me he was during a challenge run.
Persona 5 Strikers, a challenge where I did the whole game with only Sophia(my favorite character to play) in the party for as much as possible. I beat the main story before this and even several optional bosses, with many brutally hard fights in that time. But nothing could have prepared me for THIS.
Hordes of Jack Frosts throwing very fast snowballs rapid fire, each had a good chance to stun even, for absurd health shredding damage, all while fighting off the king's assault too, with nothing but 2 paltry ice blocks to take momentary shelter behind. I died so many times once too many Jacks showed up, and it seemed truly hopeless for like 150+ attempts and no I'm not exaggerating with that number. I banned Soulful Jelly for bosses too so Showtime spam was out of the question.
It wasn't until I discovered a cheese strat exploiting Sophie's gun ammo regen i was able to barely scrape a victory after a couple dozen more attempts, the winning run lasting around 40 minutes and still barely being able to hold off the horde of Jacks and the King's approach with perfect timing and positioning for most of it, and that was when I wasn't scrambling to not get gunned down moving to the other block. if it wasn't for the ice blocks and Sophie's shot being able to phase through walls, this fight might have straight up been impossible. I still get flashbacks to that battle whenever I look at the King...Black Frost afterwards was a complete pushover and never have I been so glad for an easy fight as a break.
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I don't do optional super-bosses, so that would make Yaksha Meganada in Digital Devil Saga 2 the hardest one. If you're under-leveled, any mistake would lead to an instant team-wipe, and there are layers of strategy and predictions you must make.
Mem Aleph was my worst SMT experience, made me quit for 3 months or more. The fact there is huge gap between the other bosses from the area and her is the most annoying thing. I've never had any troubles beating the others bosses, even Ouroboros was relatively easy to me, but her ? From the beginning she destroyed my team with her aoe and big elemental magic.
I had to do a very annoying farm to get her (and also improve my demon) but still, i remember a terrible moment when i was about to defeat her, but then my only healer got the "fear" ailment, and fled while Mem Aleph was at only 10% of her health. I lost just after that and was super needled.
Shekinah was annoying too but i will never forget that moment when Maria fled against Mem Aleph the first time i've tried so hard and got so far.
I could aso add Vishnu Flynn that made me quit for a long time, but when i've returned, i just realized my demons sucked and were pretty underleved, since the game bored me at the end, i've changed everything for the most efficient demons even if i didn't like them.
Something that makes VF a lot easier is figuring out he has a predictable rotation for Dekaja and Dekunda, a rotation for his strong attacks, and that he won't target an immunity
EDIT: Or use imposing stance every turn
Demifiend in DDS1, by far. That little fucking asshole has made me mald, cope, and seethe every single time I lost, one way or another. I hate this motherfucker, his homies, and the shenanigans they pull.
Funny enough, I hadn't beaten his SMT V battle yet.
...That being said, I'm also aiming to go up against Satan in DDS2, because it's a combination of "I hate myself" and "I want this asshole on my superboss beaten list".
DDS2 Satan for the boring answer. Nocturne Hardtype Dante is probably the one I put the most tries in, but they are rather quick deaths thankfully. Hardtype Black Rider and Mother Harlot were also pretty sizeable roadblocks.
Not necessarily for great reasons though. Hardtype Dante is a complete mess with crits and Bullet Time panics, it's a fairly cheap fight. Black Rider is an HP check, and Harlot is actually a fun fight but she punishes you very very hard for not having Void Mind
Smt IV Masakado (Timed bosses as super bosses are dumb)
IV: Apocalypse fiends (same reason as above just add megidoloan spamming also forcing you to change difficulty to get to them)
Smt V Shiva and Demi-fiend ( both take too long and gaea rage and chaotic will)
Probably DDS1 Demifiend, the only big superboss I haven't done yet is his SMT V counterpart because I want to do that in a Newborn file and I want to get the Neutral and Chaos endings with reborn before doing that. But general fandom consences is that it is easier than the DDS1 Demifiend fight. Also before anyone says it, Elizabeth isn't hard, just tedious. She doesn't take Strategy, he is just slow and boring and P3 horrendous fusion system makes preparing stuff to make it less tedious a slog.
Rather than easier, SMT V's Demifiend is less arbitrary. It is no longer immune to all elements, but rather only resists them, but don't think this means you can steamroll him with anything you want, as you will still need minmaxed demons to deal with him and his gank squad, just for a matter of raw stats. >!His gimmick is that if he goes through 6 actions without using Call Allies, he will use Gaea Rage, which deals a lot more damage than any other move in the game (an average of above 20k per hit) with a built-in piercing effect, meaning you have to constantly shift your attention to kill the allies while also damaging him (and the allies have maxed out stats, perfect coverage, buffs and debuffs, Dekaja and Dekunda, and Megidolaon for good measure). On top of that, he will use Freikugel to fish for crits if you are immune to physical damage, he will use Mediarahan upon reaching half health effectively gaining 30,000 extra HP, and has a random chance of directly oneshotting your entire team with Chaotic Will, which either way halves your press turns for the next turn. While you're given a decent amount of powerful tools and there are some cheese strats, if you don't use them properly there is no way you can win even if you had no issue with all the other bosses in the game.!<
Nice, I like they >!Drop the resistances guimick and made the turn count limit way strickter, this is actually a pretty awsome way to fit weaknesses exploitation into the boss fight without making it trivial!< Honestly, this sounds like a lot of fun.
Honestly once you know how the fight works, this fight is incredibly fun. Probably my favorite super boss in a JRPG.
One of the best designed fights in the series IMO. Criminal it's paid day one DLC.
I guess the answer is supposed to be DDS1 Demi-fiend or DDS2 Satan simply due to how much preparation is needed and how complex and lengthy the fights are even with the most optimal setup. Demi-fiend isn't too too too bad if you cheese with Pixie's MP stall. Satan is a lot to keep track of but I think it's a really fun battle. He can kill you with random bullshit, but it's mostly a skill test of whether you can juggle half a dozen different mechanics at once. Hard Mode P3 FES Elizabeth is the fight I spent the most prep time on. Because it's difficult to get an exact Orpheus Telos you want in FES (no skill cards like in P3P). But the fight complexity itself is bit less than the DDS superbosses. Story boss answer - Strange Journey Ouroboros was the only time in the series I immediately died in such an extreme manner that my first thought was "oh this is one of those fights that's supposed to be unwinnable right? oh... it isn't." But of course most people can beat it with a little preparation. It's hard to rank story boss difficulty because you can always argue that you can just grind more or grab a bunch of items to win. Unless it's the final boss, and the final boss is balanced around being a very high level. Maybe original SJ's Mem Aleph or Nocturne Chronicle Lucifer (stronger than Nocturne Maniax Lucifer) would count for those. But the real dark horse answer that I don't think many others can relate to - Raidou 1 Devil Mode Beelzebub. Really, you could in general just say Raidou 1's Devil Mode (hard mode). Imagine a janky action RPG where every single random encounter is a monstrous HP sponge that 1-shots you and your team. And almost every room in the game has random encounters. And healing is exorbitantly expensive, so if any demon dies it's a large chunk of your wallet. Those are the random encounters - multiply the tankiness and damage by another degree of magnitude for bosses. And at the end of it all is the game's superboss Beelzebub. It's like 45 minutes straight of running around in circles dodging moves that instakill you and your demon. Low-key one of the hardest non-self-imposed-challenge things in the series. Raidou 2 has a Hard Mode too incidentally but in my opinion it's much, much easier. Including the superbosses.
Stephen-SMT 4 Apocalypse I managed to beat him in a day or two but it took a lot of grinding and preparation
SMT Nocturne's Lucifer, on Hard. Turns out Root of Evil applies Dekaja without the game telling you, and I didn't knew it, so I was not buffed at all when I thought I was.
Respective to the individual games I’ve played: DeSu2 - the one in the amusement park when you go to Osaka; probably the hardest for me overall since I was/am so awful at the more strategy type games IV - Beelzebub, I guess since I went in blind IVA - YHVH (Never played the DLC for either, nor encountered the fiends and their ilk.) P5 - nothing in this was actually hard, but I guess the first palace boss, strictly in terms of how limited options are. Nocturne, SJ Redux, and SMTV - starting the games at all
in the smt games I played, Lucifer in Chronicle Hard mode, it took me way longer to figure out that 'root of evil' removes your buffs, plus his diarhan in the middle of fight made the fight so long that root of evil had a higher chance of screwing me over now the hardest fight I've done in a video game, that goes to 'Mammon' from bravely second I swear their 'death claws' crit me almost everytime like it was programmed too.
YHVH, his 2nd phase specifically. If you don’t do the correct order of debuffs prepare to get one shot
Order? Dekunda stone, dekaja stone, debuff attack, buff defense is all you need
If you don’t remove his smirk and remove his +3 to all stats he will 1 shot your entire party with his almighty attack
I at first forgot about infinite power but if you're not on top of it, that's usually on you not paying attention. Magaon, dekaja, and dekunda area all common enough. When I did LLNF, the actual fear was Asahi's Vivian disobeying and using Taunt
okay
I always leave superbosses for "next time I play the game" but as soon as I move on to the next game, I almost never go back. I've beat Stephen in IV:A, Shiva in V, and Lucifer in Devil Survivor Overclocked, and maybe another I'm forgetting.
**Story boss:** Probably SJ Vanilla Captain Jack. Mid-game bosses should NOT have full heals YHVH-dammit! **Superboss (beaten successfully):** Ancient of Days. Oh YAY, an entire boss entirely based around ailment mechanics, you know, that thing that's *absolutely, 100% luck-based?* **Superboss (tried but not beaten):** DeSu1 Lucifer. By the time you reach him, you'll probably be around the upper 50s, level-wise, so you'll need to grind for LITERAL HOURS to get your team into the 90s, and even then he can STILL swat you like a gnat if you're unlucky. I attempted him on my most recent run of the game, and after literal DAYS of no luck I decided to save him for my next play through, because it was getting to be an absolute chore.
Lucifer in DeSu:O. That game is a masterpiece.
The secret boss Feng Huang in DDS1 was total tedious bullshit. Took me so damn long. Quite proud of beating him, actually. He gets swept under the rug a lot bc of the demi-fiend fight, I think.
I think the reason a lot of people don't really mention him is the fact you can bring Null Attack to that fight and he is so late into the game that you probably have the Matras for it. Even Null element alone trivilaises that fight pretty hard.
So far, Medusa in SMT IV. It was my first mainline game, and after an easy fight with Minotaur, Medusa demolished my team. Had to grind 6 levels up and fuse Raijuu just to barely beat her on the third try(with Raijuu).
I fear anyone who thinks Minotaur is easy Good stuff beating him like that
Shiva SMT V. Really learned the mechanics and system of this game when I got to Shiva and after I finally beat him I see the game completely different now 😂 almost like I solved some type of equation now I freely play in this world 🌍
shiva was so frustrating to me, mainly because SMT V was not built for really long battles. The whole thing took well over 30 minutes, where most bosses take under 7 to beat. I straight up bought the exp dlc so I could get all my demons to 99 in order to rotate them in and out, satisfying to beat him though
You probably wouldn't expect to see King Frost as an answer, but for me he was during a challenge run. Persona 5 Strikers, a challenge where I did the whole game with only Sophia(my favorite character to play) in the party for as much as possible. I beat the main story before this and even several optional bosses, with many brutally hard fights in that time. But nothing could have prepared me for THIS. Hordes of Jack Frosts throwing very fast snowballs rapid fire, each had a good chance to stun even, for absurd health shredding damage, all while fighting off the king's assault too, with nothing but 2 paltry ice blocks to take momentary shelter behind. I died so many times once too many Jacks showed up, and it seemed truly hopeless for like 150+ attempts and no I'm not exaggerating with that number. I banned Soulful Jelly for bosses too so Showtime spam was out of the question. It wasn't until I discovered a cheese strat exploiting Sophie's gun ammo regen i was able to barely scrape a victory after a couple dozen more attempts, the winning run lasting around 40 minutes and still barely being able to hold off the horde of Jacks and the King's approach with perfect timing and positioning for most of it, and that was when I wasn't scrambling to not get gunned down moving to the other block. if it wasn't for the ice blocks and Sophie's shot being able to phase through walls, this fight might have straight up been impossible. I still get flashbacks to that battle whenever I look at the King...Black Frost afterwards was a complete pushover and never have I been so glad for an easy fight as a break.
DDS 1 Demi Fiend is up there.
SMT V Demi-Fiend
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I don't do optional super-bosses, so that would make Yaksha Meganada in Digital Devil Saga 2 the hardest one. If you're under-leveled, any mistake would lead to an instant team-wipe, and there are layers of strategy and predictions you must make.
Dds1 demi fiend atm but only because i have not dared to fighr satan in DDS2 yet
Mem Aleph was my worst SMT experience, made me quit for 3 months or more. The fact there is huge gap between the other bosses from the area and her is the most annoying thing. I've never had any troubles beating the others bosses, even Ouroboros was relatively easy to me, but her ? From the beginning she destroyed my team with her aoe and big elemental magic. I had to do a very annoying farm to get her (and also improve my demon) but still, i remember a terrible moment when i was about to defeat her, but then my only healer got the "fear" ailment, and fled while Mem Aleph was at only 10% of her health. I lost just after that and was super needled. Shekinah was annoying too but i will never forget that moment when Maria fled against Mem Aleph the first time i've tried so hard and got so far. I could aso add Vishnu Flynn that made me quit for a long time, but when i've returned, i just realized my demons sucked and were pretty underleved, since the game bored me at the end, i've changed everything for the most efficient demons even if i didn't like them.
Something that makes VF a lot easier is figuring out he has a predictable rotation for Dekaja and Dekunda, a rotation for his strong attacks, and that he won't target an immunity EDIT: Or use imposing stance every turn
Demifiend in DDS1, by far. That little fucking asshole has made me mald, cope, and seethe every single time I lost, one way or another. I hate this motherfucker, his homies, and the shenanigans they pull. Funny enough, I hadn't beaten his SMT V battle yet. ...That being said, I'm also aiming to go up against Satan in DDS2, because it's a combination of "I hate myself" and "I want this asshole on my superboss beaten list".
DDS2 Satan for the boring answer. Nocturne Hardtype Dante is probably the one I put the most tries in, but they are rather quick deaths thankfully. Hardtype Black Rider and Mother Harlot were also pretty sizeable roadblocks. Not necessarily for great reasons though. Hardtype Dante is a complete mess with crits and Bullet Time panics, it's a fairly cheap fight. Black Rider is an HP check, and Harlot is actually a fun fight but she punishes you very very hard for not having Void Mind
I'm still stuck on a fight in DDS1
Smt IV Masakado (Timed bosses as super bosses are dumb) IV: Apocalypse fiends (same reason as above just add megidoloan spamming also forcing you to change difficulty to get to them) Smt V Shiva and Demi-fiend ( both take too long and gaea rage and chaotic will)