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P5R: How to beat the Okumura boss

So you’ve been having a great time in Persona 5 Royal. You’ve nailed the combat system and you’re pumped as you battle your way to the end of Kunikazu Okumura’s palace. But how to beat the Okumura boss?!

When I reached this point in P5R, I was blindsided. Everything was so different. I could no longer trigger an all-out attack. I only had a limited amount of time to defeat the shadows before they’d run off and propel me into an endless battle cycle. Worse, there was a time limit for the overall fight. The clock was ticking.

how to beat okumura boss
I’m here to ruin your fun

Now I should say, I adore this game (check out my mini review: Is Persona 5 Royal worth it?) But the redesigned Okumura boss is a steaming pile of brokenness. It drove me mad, and at times I thought I’d never get past it. However, I developed a strategy that actually worked for me first time round, so I thought I’d share it in this post.

Consider this article the unofficial therapy group for people who’ve been psychologically scarred by this train wreck of a gaming experience 😉 Here’s what you need to do if your day’s been ruined by this, ahem, “improved” boss battle…

1) Switch the difficulty to Merciless

Okay, this is going to sound completely counter-intuitive, but it will help you enormously. The problem is, the game seems to be trying to encourage you to harness the baton pass mechanic, i.e. target the enemy’s weakness, fell them, pass the baton and exponentially increase the power of your attacks until you obliterate all the shadows.

However, call me stupid but I could never work out how to beat the Okumura boss on Normal. Oh I could target their weaknesses just fine, but no amount of chaining allowed me to kill all the shadows within the two-round time limit. (I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I never managed it 😉 )

how to beat okumura boss

But if you increase the difficulty to Merciless, you’re going to deal a lot more damage with each blow. This is one of the perks of this mode; it’ll make it easier for you to kill all the shadows before they run away. Of course it means that you’ll be more vulnerable as well, so I’d say equip the strongest armour for each of your team mates, and equip accessories that will maximise the power of your characters’ attacks.

2) Pick the right team

So the first round of enemies is weak to fire and wind. The second round is weak to psychic. The third, nuclear and electricity. The fourth, wind and bless. The fifth, curse and psychic. Shout-out to Samuel for help with these! (Also note, the boss battle continues after the fifth round, but I’ll come to that joyous moment in a sec…)

As you can see, this is a pretty broad spectrum of weaknesses, so you could potentially beat Okumura with any combination of fighters. However, in the end I opted for Joker, Ryuji, Haru and Morgana. Oh, and make sure each of your fighters is set to receive direct commands 😉

The baton pass mechanic is still going to be critical here. Target the enemies’ weaknesses with your personas, if possible. If you can’t, then use an item that targets their weaknesses. If you can’t do that, then I’d say just target them with any kind of magic attack that you know – ideally electricity, because there’s a chance that paralysis will kick in, which will shield you from further attacks.

how to beat okumura boss

So a combination of the right fighters and attacks, with well-timed baton-passing, should get you through the first five waves of enemies. But if it doesn’t, just keep trying. And trust me when I say that I feel your pain!

3) Bludgeon the big black robot

This guy shows up right after you’ve defeated the fifth round of enemies. And he’s tough. Keep Joker’s health as high as possible, and watch out for when he goes for the Big Bang Order; you’ll see that the robot suddenly becomes ‘focused.’

My advice here? Do nothing. Guard like your life depends on it. The shadow is preparing to launch the lethal Big Bang Challenge attack, which can wipe you out in one volley, even if your HP is high. So as I say, be prepared for this, and keep your fighters’ health as high as possible – particularly Joker’s, lest you feel like learning how to beat the Okumura boss all over again…!

Otherwise, it’s the technical attacks that are going to serve you best here. If possible, utilise Ryuji’s strongest electrical attacks to paralyse the robot, and follow this up with technical beatings. Physical attacks are also effective, but be mindful of the fact that you could potentially paralyse yourself if you’ve already paralysed the droid.

how to beat okumura boss
The most lethal fries you’ll ever see… The dreaded Big Bang Challenge

4) Let cognitive Haru blow herself up

I’m not even sure if it’s possible to destroy the Haru robot, as I’ve never done it! She steps forward right after you’ve beaten the big black robot, and as far as I can tell, she doesn’t have any weaknesses.

This part of the Okumura boss is pretty short, so I’d say give priority to keeping the team’s health high. When Okumura gives the order for Haru to self destruct, make sure that you guard. She’ll then explode in a glorious ball of white light and ta-dah! You’ve reached the end of this diabolical experience!

Well… almost 😉 You’ll have to deliver one final blow to Okumura himself, but anything reasonably powerful should be good enough. I defeated him in just one hit, but I’m not sure if it’s possible for other team members to take a punt.

Anyway, you shouldn’t have any trouble with this final section, so long as you have enough minutes left on the clock.

5) So that’s how to beat the Okumura boss!

Rejoice! Enjoy the cutscenes! Wipe the sweat from your brow… You’re done 🙂 Trust me when I say that this the only awful moment of P5R and the rest of the game should be a fairly sublime experience. (Okay, I had some issues with the boss at the end of the third semester, but that was a breeze compared to this bundle of misery…)

Let me know how you get on. And tell me – do you have your own thoughts as to how to beat the Okumura boss? Do you have a better strategy? Tell me what worked for you in the comments below.

27 comments

  1. THIS WORKED… unbelievable! When I did the Kamoshida boss battle I decided to go from merciless to hard difficulty and played the rest of the game that way. But with Okumura I kept running into the issue of waves 4 and 5 running away before I could kill them all. I tried on Hard, Normal and even Easy with that being the result every time. But on Merciless I finished them all on the first attempt easily. The giant robot was very easy also, shocked him and used heavy damage Physical attacks for technical damage increase. All of my roster is at level 39-40 and Joker personas around mid 30s. Fun fact to add: wave 1 is also weak to wind, and wave 5 is weak to psi.

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  4. Fighting this boss was so frustrating to me at first because it was the first time I game overed in the game and restarted the fight several times. As someone who is experiencing P5 for the first time (never played vanilla), it really soured my taste on the game a tad with how much I wanted to rage quit. BUT I think I found a way to beat the boss on Normal if you don’t want to switch to Merciless.

    I don’t know if this was the developers’ intent with P5R, but when I realized I couldn’t beat those awful blue and green bots on Normal after several tries, I just reloaded my save, went to Kichijoji, and played darts with my party members. Haru and Morgana especially got special attention from me. I did this on two different evenings to upgrade my party’s baton pass power and wow, it really helped. Granted, I also did a tiny bit of grinding in Mementos on the side by completing a couple of requests. But the upgraded baton pass power was a big help in that fight. Hope it helps.

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    • Wow, yeah it really does! Thanks Ragnell, I’ll be sure to try that. Sorry you had to go through this on your first experience of P5!! It’s such a weird piece of brokenness in an otherwise amazing game (in my opinion 😉)

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  5. I’ve been trying to beat this all day, and redid it maybe 6 times. But my first try of doing what you recommended and I won! Thanks for the super helpful tips!

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  8. I almost cried in relied when I bear him! Thanks so much for this guide! It really helped after losing so many times. ;-;❤

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  9. Another good tip: bring gun skills. For some reason nothing resists them, so you should be able to get more damage from them. Bugs is brilliant for this with triple down as an innate skill but Haru also comes with it, so between these options, you should be able to get more damage consistently. If you fancy Mementos grinding, specifically for money, then go for Seth as early as possible, for not only One Shot Kill, but Gun Amp too (at level 53).

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  12. This boss can be beaten without switching to merciless. It requires some preparation though.

    Things to do beforehand:
    Run any memento quests you have to get up your levels

    Play darts with team mates that you will use to get to baton level 3 with each of them

    play billiards to up your technical damage

    Gather attack items that team mates who don’t have a skill that corresponds with the weakness of the enemies can use to get a knockdown. Try to find the most powerful attack items you can. You can make a bunch such as curse, bless items etc etc but those often do 50 damage. If you can get some items that do more damage like 150 you will want those specifically for the final wave of four enemies.

    For teammates I like to use haru, makoto, morgana and then after making it through the final wave to the executive director I tend to swap ryuji in place of haru, which I will explain further below.

    Know the weaknesses for each wave in advance because the fight is timed, so you don’t want to be wasting time trying to figure out the weaknesses of each wave.

    With each wave of four enemies you have two rounds of turns. What I do is use characters who don’t have a skill for the weakness of the enemy and simply throw one of the attack items for that weakness at one of the enemies to get the knock down. Then I baton pass to the next team mate who does not have a skill for the weakness of the enemy and repeat. Then I baton pass again to either myself or the team mate that has the skill for the weakness to knock down the third enemy. The goal is that on the fourth baton pass you have three enemies down with one enemy standing an the team mate whose turn it is has the strongest skill that can be used against multiple enemies for that particular weakness and who gets to go twice.

    The first couple of waves should be pretty simply. It is the last wave of 4 that tends to trip people up most of the time. People aren’t doing enough damage fast enough to clear them in the two rounds.

    What I do is in the second to last wave of four enemies I try to kill or get down to the bare minimum almost all the enemies as soon as possible in the first round, so I have them down to the point where I can eliminate the wave in 1 or 2 hits during the second round. I don’t want to kill them all off because then that triggers the next wave right away. Instead it is at this point that I use any skills or items I have to up the attack power for the team (or if not available for the full team for the team member that will be going fourth in their attacks during the final round (since they will be the most powerful team mate for that enemy weakness and will get two shots). I also make sure to remove any debuffs. In the final wave I also pay close attention to how much health each enemy has on the second round, so if there is a scenario where all four are down but I can only hit one even if its a light hit I want to make sure to put that hit on the enemy with the most health so that way all the enemies are at roughly the same health level when I start the multi enemy attack and I don’t run into a situation where I kill three of the four but then the last guy who has a little sliver of health is able to run off and reset the wave.

    After clearing the final wave of four then the fight shifts to the executive director. At this point I swap haru for ryuji. I buff makoto’s attack power and I use ryuji and myself to cast electric until I get shock on executive director. Then makoto or myself comes in with nuclear for technical damage. If you move through the initial waves quickly enough you should have plenty of time with the executive director where you can take time to heal if need be. I always guard during the big bang attack and remove hunger if it lands on anyone.

    Shadow Haru is simple. Just heal up and make a couple quick attacks and then guard for her self destruct. Remember the clock keeps ticking during some of the dialogue so factor that in.

    The fight is probably the most annoying in the game but it can be beaten if methodical. I just did it and had 7 minutes still left on timer after I finished. Hopefully this helps.

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      • First of all, thank you so much cause thanks to your advice I could beat this boss. I did everything you said, except to switch to merciless. Yes, I tried with Merciless but the Big Robot instakill all of us, even when I put everybody on guard. Maybe I was to weak for that battle sonInhad to switch back to normal.

        In Merciless is great because I could kill every round of monster with two attacks. In Normal I had to attack 4 times and in 2 occasions one of them scaped so I had to repeat again, but at least the big robot couldn’t instakill me with the big bang attack.

        I will try again in Merciless in my next run because it’s awesome and faster. Thank You very much!

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  13. I know this is mega old, but you can also cheese it pretty easily by picking up Messiah Picaro from the twins. Follow the guide and always end your baton pass on Joker, easily decimate them with Megidolaon. I usually like the challenge on P5R, but this drove me crazy enough to just break out the exploit.

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  14. Oh good lord thank you. I could see that was going to absolutely do my head in. I switched to merciless and took the robot waves out laughably easily; the big black robot was brutal though.

    He wiped everyone out except joker and I had that roll of the dice where I had one attack left before he killed me… I gambled on a “bloodbath” (knowing I’d die next round as it was Big Bang) and thank the heavens it chipped off that last bit of his health.

    What a brutal ordeal and a nasty change of pace in the game.

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