Awesome Bosses / Shin Megami Tensei

aka: Bosses Shin Megami Tensei

With a rich tapestry of gods and monsters from many different mythologies around the world and throughout history, it's no surprise that the various series under the Shin Megami Tensei umbrella have plenty of awesome boss fights to offer.

We can almost forgive Atlus for making them so hard almost all of them are in the That One Boss page. (And the Nightmare Fuel one, for that matter.)

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Shin Megami Tensei series

• Shin Megami Tensei II had one of these for everyone who has ever wanted to take Rage Against the Heavens to its logical conclusion by making the final boss... GOD HIMSELF!
• The main series of games in Shin Megami Tensei is full of these.
  • It's hard to hold a candle to Matador from Nocturne. Matador leads off the fight with Red Capote, which maximizes his accuracy and evasion. He spends the whole fight peppering your party with the multi-target Mazan, while prior bosses Forneus and Specter only broke out multi-target attacks at low health. As the battle progresses, Matador busts out the combination of defense-lowering Taunt and stronger multi-target attack Andalucia (which, unlike force-element Mazan, you have no way of blocking to deplete his turns). While Matador's not so tough once you've gotten some demons with buff skills, he's still the first major roadblock of the game given the scarcity of those skills at that juncture - so he's sure to be a fight to remember.
  • There is also Lucifer, True Final Boss of Nocturne... He has a 75% resistance to every attack (even the almighty ones). He can be rationally defeated ONLY if you have the right skill (Pierce, which you can only get after beating the bonus level)... SMT has plenty of these bosses.
  • Kagutsuchi, the regular Final Boss, is also pretty awesome. A pure Damage-Sponge Boss with a total of 60,000 HP between his two forms, the first form has you monitor the Kagutsuchi phase as he charges up his ultimate attack, and the second form has him used a buffed up version of said ultimate attack. Oh, and he's another form of the final boss of Shin Megami Tensei II, AKA God.
• Albion from Nocturne has a very unique gimmick; his backup are all based on a certain element, and since there are four major elements, it's like you're fighting 5 bosses at once. The Zoas will spam -dyne spells while Albion knocks your party around with physical moves. In addition, if you ignore the Zoas and just focus on Albion, he's instantly revived at full health. The reverse is true as well; Albion can revive all 4 of the Zoas at once. He's also a Large Ham in a game with no voice acting.
  Albion: LINE UP THE FLEET! TIME FOR SOME HEAT!
• Dante. Holy shit. Frustrating? 100%, but it's a spectacle to watch all of his moves and how stylish they are. Not only that, but when he's on your party, the attacks are just as powerful, and just as cool looking.
• Every Fiend is a major nightmare to battle. None of them, however, come close to Trumpeter. In Nocturne, the brutal combo of Holy Melody/Evil Melody and his overpowered attacks make him already nigh-unbeatable without a well-rehearsed strategy. In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, however, he manages to top himself - still a major powerhouse, he adds Horn of Fate to his arsenal. This means he can effortlessly kill anyone who is vulnerable to either Light or Dark alignments instantly with virtually no chance of stopping him. And he also has Hostile Terror, meaning he can now slap all enemies with any ailment he wants. And he STILL has Megidolaon.
• Babel, in Devil Survivor, summoning EVERY SINGLE MAJOR BOSS YOU'VE FOUGHT, and then having to face it as it opens to reveal the demon world... with awesome music to match.
  • And at least in one, once you've trashed the Bels, one after another, you command Babel to shunt away all demons in the area. Babel complies... including your own demons, so you have to pound an Eldritch Abomination into dust with what amounts to your fists.
  • Lucifer also makes a comeback. Calling the fight a feast and calling itself your father, summoning some of the most powerful Demonic Spiders of the game, reflecting any and all physical attacks, and viciously, gleefully abusing the evil that is Megidoladyne. Oh, yes. You're goin' down, pal. And his speech when you finally destroy him. Lucifer himself trash-talking Belberith is a thing of beauty.
    Lucifer: Haha... Belzaboul was doomed. No soul should possess your wisdom, strength and beauty... Go, Abel. Belberith will fall before you. The scarlet snake is at your side...
  • The duel between Gin and Azuma. Particularly if you have the party dispatch his goons, then just sit back and watch Gin kick Azuma's ass. Yes, it is possible for Azuma to be defeated without you intervening—Gin has a very excellent skill and demon setup that allows him to survive on his own—unlike many other NPCs, friend and foe, who don't bother to revive allies most of the time, he makes the smart choice of using the Revive auto-skill!
• Devil Survivor 2:
  • You eventually square off against the Big Bad, Polaris. She starts off Nigh-Invulnerable, and you break through this by dismantling her defenses. And depending on the route you've chosen, the pace of the fight will differ afterwards. On Daichi's Restorer route, you face off against Shadow versions of your party members!
  • The Record Breaker version has its own Big Bad, Canopus. Like its predecessor, it's Nigh-Invulnerable, so your party develops a way to bypass that — Skill Crack the Factors that make up the universe. You automatically do so as you beat the sub-bosses on the way to the Big Bad, and you have the undeniable sensation of sheer power as you face it.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has great bosses. Alilat has Diarahan, fully healing herself at whim, and being capable of firing off Mind Charged Megidolaons for complete wipeouts, and bounces off physical and Gun attacks. Mother Maya insta-kills anybody who dares use magic against her. Ouroboros uses an attack to randomly slap you with any ailment it wants and heals itself constantly in its first phase, then uses a very strong physical attack on the second. Morax, the very first boss, can be a nightmare if it begins using Tyranny, as can be Asura with Asura Roga. Mother Mem Aleph uses intensely destructive magic of all alignments and random physical attacks that are very capable of killing entire parties. Demiurge loves spamming Big Bang (Almighty-type attack, stronger than Megidolaon) and equally vicious offensive magic. And they're all awesome.
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV, pretty much any boss where you can have dialogue choices during the Boss Banter. Such as Minotaur, which allows you to pull off a couple of Badass Boasts, which throw the Minotaur off guard. In the Neutral path, friggin' Lucifer is awestruck and Merkabah acknowledges you as his Worthy Opponent at the correct answer.
  • Pluto is also a pretty awesome boss, despite being pretty difficult. It has an exploitable weakness, but also has the opportunity to crit with a long string of Press Turns, which it will use to decimate your party with status effects with Sunny Ray and Vulnera. Not only that but the fact that it sounds like a fanatic Dalek makes it a really unique boss. Its last words are particularly hilarious:
    "Diiieeee...DIIIIEEE...DDDddDddiiiIiIIiiIiEEeeEeeeeee..."
  • David shows up right out of nowhere in a sidequest, but his appearance is very memorable. In addition to providing a really challenging fight, he comes with a remix of the Nocturne Fiend theme while ominously foreshadowing how the other Fiends are in the game too.
  • Fiends as a whole tend to be this...if you put up with the 1/255 chance to find them upon entering an area. Particular mention goes to Red Rider, who is the strongest of them all.
  • King Kenji in Infernal Tokyo, whose Schmuck Bait is a stroke of Fridge Brilliance: Near the end of the battle, Kenji claims to admit defeat, and then the game offers you the chance to pick up the remote. If you do pick it up, he sucker-punches you with a physical attack that also inflicts Sick status on the entire party. Yes, he's fighting dirty. But considering that Infernal Tokyo is a society where, as Akira puts it, "you can do anything you want, as long as you have the power to back it up," it makes sense for Kenji to pull such a cheap tactic on you.
  • The two-part boss quest "Rebirth of the Great Overlord". First, the Red Knight, who you saw attempting to summon Baal in the "Mysterious Story of Tennozu" quest, reveals himself to be your former king, and attempts to make a sacrifice out of you. He uses the same moves he did before, so it's not too terrible of a fight. Then comes the true challenge of the quest: Baal reveals himself to be Beelzebub, who is level 90 and has several attacks true to Beelzebub's association with pestilence such as Pandemic Bomb (Sick status to all enemies) and Death's Door (1 HP of Almighty damage, HP to 1 if the target is Sick). To drive home the point that you're up against the hardest Challenge Quest boss in the game, the music for this fight is not the quest boss music or even the Domain boss music, but the Main Quest boss theme.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse:
  • Merkabah and Lucifer, the Final Bosses of the Chaos and Law endings, respectively. This time, you fight them in the big chamber of the Yamato Perpetual Reactor, with a big crowd of Hunters of all alignments looking on.
  • The final boss, none other than the big G himself, YHVH. On Bonds, each of your partners steps up to call him out on His hypocrisy and lies, denying His divinity and wearing Him down until He loses His Top God status, and on top of that, you have a second party consisting of Flynn and his Samurai companions! On Massacre, instead of Flynn's Samurai companions, Satan himself steps up to help you dethrone YHVH!
  • Before the final boss, there's Vishnuflynn, which is the result of Krishna emerging from the war's ashes and merging with a brainwashed Flynn for one last fight, ultimately ending with either Flynn or Nanashi killing Krishna for good.
  • The final DLC fight with Stephen, who is so powerful that the Hero, Aleph, and the Demi-fiend have to help in the fight.
  • En No Ozuno in the DLC that unlocks him as the final part of the Fiends dungeon, where defeating him causes all the Fiends to revive stronger than before with each respawn of the group.

Persona series

• Persona 2: Innocent Sin's Final Boss: Great Father Nyarlathotep. The chaos of Humanity's heart incarnate. Extremely vicious attacks, pummeling both HP and SP. Unforgettable boss. Nazi warmechs created from rumors. Doppelgangers created by the avatar of madness in your image, wielding your powers. Hate Plague Personas infecting your friends and enemies alike. Eldritch Abominations straight out of the mythos. Adolf Hitler. Let Nyarlathotep see what it can come up with; it's going to get junked anyway.
• Persona 3. Nyx Avatar. 13 forms, no stopping. That's where it gets epic. Where it becomes a Crowning Moment is the battle after that, wherein the main character unlocks their true Arcana, that of the Universe, representing ascension/enlightenment, stands up to a monster which is single handedly destroying the world, takes said world-destroying blast to the face — repeatedly, ignores it, raises one finger and blasts him out of the sky. "It's Useless," indeed!
  • It's even better when you beat the first 12 forms with (relatively) little difficulty, and then, when you think it's all over... "I sense... Death! Nyx's true Arcana is Death!" This is when the fight actually gets HARD, with the last form having a lot more HP than any of the others, specifically, 4x, and the boss uses its most powerful attacks, such as Night Queen, which can screw you over if you don't know what's coming. Plus, the running dialogue during the fight is awesome, especially if you realise that what Nyx Avatar says before turning into a certain form describes what that Arcana represents in the Tarot.
  • Any battle against Strega. Fighting Jin and Takaya particularly, though there's something of an emotional level involved too when fighting Chidori. Not only are the battles epic on their own, but they have the added value of being set to "Unavoidable Battle", possibly one of the most hard-rocking and epic boss battle tunes EVER. Plus, they are the only bosses (apart from Nyx Avatar) who have running dialogue as you wear down their HP.
  • For Arcana bosses, the fight against Strength and Fortune stands out. Not because of its difficulty, but more because of the fact that it's easy to manipulate the Wheel Of Fortune attack, causing damage and bad status effects to the boss while you laugh about how it constantly gets hoisted by its own petard.
  • Also, Superboss Elizabeth. The only enemy in the entire game (without multiple forms at least) that can SURVIVE Armageddon, and if you pull it on her, SHE KILLS YOU INSTANTLY. And she can also SWITCH PERSONAS just like you, making it essentially like you're fighting yourself. It adds challenge by basically making it impossible for you to cheap your way out of it, since you are not allowed to use a Persona that nulls/absorbs more than one element, so no Nul-All Abaddon for you. Easily one of the hardest battles in the game, even if you manage to get Orpheus Telos. For an added epic feel, you have to fight her alone, making it essentially a Duel Mirror Boss.
• Persona 4 has quite a few examples, too. In order of appearance, there's...
  • Shadow Mitsuo, who starts the battle by summoning a barrier that looks like an 8-bit video game hero. He even summons a retro RPG-style interface in attacks, and in Golden an 8-bit remix of "I'll Face Myself" plays.
  • The Reaper has dual wielding revolvers the size of thighbones! How is that NOT awesome?
  • Kunino-sagiri, who can best be described as a New-Age Retro Hippie angel.
  • Magatsu Izanagi, who looks like your own first Persona... if you were not such a nice person. And after him comes...
  • Adachi. Just like Strega before him, he has a Persona, which is an alternate form of the protagonist's starting Persona. Sure, the battle is easy, but managing to hunt down the killer and fight the guy that's caused so much trouble is just so satisfying.
  • Ameno-sagiri, which boasts one of the best battle themes in the game.
  • Izanami, whose second form contains an amazing Theme Music Power-Up.
  • And last but not least, the secret boss, Margaret, who has an arsenal of Personas with which to take you on. That's a lot!
• The boss fights in Persona 5 are a lot more dynamic than in previous games, but there are a few that stand out.
  • The first boss fight against Suguru Kamoshida's Shadow, Asmodeus, sets up the majority of the fights perfectly. To start off, they really set this guy up as a major scumbag so you don't feel any remorse when you steal his heart. On top of that, each of the founding members of the Phantom Thieves has a different reason for taking him down^note He made Ren/Akira an outcast at his new school, provoked Ryuji into giving him reason to disband the track team and then broke his leg in "self defense", drove Ann's friend to suicide when she wouldn't sleep with him (and it's very heavily implied in Royal that he raped her), and his Shadow had Morgana locked up, so you just know bringing him to justice is going to be satisfying. And boy, is it ever! During the fight proper, you have to make sure his national trophy full of disembodied female legs is destroyed so he can't heal himself. After you do so, you get to call your first Special Order and have one of your party members steal his treasure, the crown on his head. All the while, Kamoshida won't make it easy for you, going so far as to spike a volleyball that causes a freakin' explosion to try and kill you. Defeating this bastard and watching him confess every sin he's ever made is simply the most gratifying of joys, and the boss fight preceding the event wasn't half bad to boot.
  • Kaneshiro's boss form, Baal, is at first much easier than the previous two bosses, only throwing out weak attacks and status effects. The midboss theme even plays instead of the boss theme to drive home how easy the fight is. However, then the boss reveals that his vault is actually a giant robot piggy bank and the actual boss theme kicks in. In Royal, that first phase is skipped altogether and the piggy bank is the first phase instead.
  • Cognitive Wakaba Isshiki makes for an impressive Climax Boss for a number of reasons. For once, you're not fighting the Shadow of the Palace you're in; rather, you're fighting a giant sphinx version of Futaba's mother. After what appears to be a Hopeless Boss Fight as it resists all of your party's attacks, Futaba arrives on the scene and accepts the truth of her mother's death before awakening her Persona and summoning an effing ballista so the Phantom Thieves can shoot the cognition out of the sky and beat her down! At the end of the fight, Futaba tells the cognition off and lets Joker deal the finishing blow, causing her to tumble down the pyramid to her doom. And the cherry on top? This is one of few boss fights in the game where "Will Power" is playing throughout.
  • The confrontation with the Traitor, Goro. Like Strega and Adachi before him, he's a Persona-user which makes the fight unique. Unlike the previous Persona-user bosses however, Goro can actually pose a threat, especially after he starts using his other Persona, Loki.
  • The confrontation with the Big Bad, Masayoshi Shido. Four forms, the last of which is a hulking monstrosity not unlike Senator Armstrong, a dynamic and often dangerous fight to the finish, and a whole lot of catharsis for all of the suffering he's put everyone through. Part of what makes the bosses of Persona 5 incredible is how good the song "Blooming Villain" is, but Shadow Shido one-ups even that with "Rivers in the Desert", which many players name as the best song in the game's already high-grade soundtrack. It also plays during the battle with the Holy Grail and the Superbosses, but it debuts with and is seemingly tailor-made for Shido to make his fight that much more incredible — you first have the instrumental version for his first three forms, and when he hulks out for his final phase you get the song's full version. Royal even takes this fight a step further: when Shido's final form drops to a quarter of its max HP, he unleashes shockwaves that knock away all of the Phantom Thieves except Joker. The fight from that point on becomes a Duel Boss. It's extremely satisfying to have Joker take Shido down one-on-one as revenge for ruining his life.
  • The Final Boss fight against Yaldabaoth, God of Control. Not only is the boss by far the largest boss in the Persona series but the concept of the fight alone is amazing, essentially fighting the Demiurge, the antithesis to Igor, and Persona's answer to YHVH. The fight itself is a massive war of attrition as the boss summons weapons throughout the fight that have their own healthbars and movesets based off of the Seven Deadly Sins requiring the player to constantly change party and tactics on the fly. Following the fight is an awesome scripted moment where Joker takes the belief of everyone to summon his ultimate persona Satanael, who is just as large as the boss and finishes it off with a Boom, Headshot! from a revolver.
  • The Superboss, the Velvet Twins. Like the previous Superbosses, they have an arsenal of Personas to take you on with and will switch between them throughout the battle, and they will take advantage of any weakness they find. Unlike the previous fights however, the Twins fight together as a Dual Boss, sharing their Persona arsenal between them, and since the fight as a team, that means they can also use Baton Pass to further exploit weaknesses, and even use All Out Attack, as well as revive each other if they aren't killed at the same time.
  • Royal adds a new Superboss, Lavenza, completely whole. Once again, the boss has an arsenal of Personas to use, but while she initially uses weak Personas like she did as the Twins, this time she starts using severe level attacks right off the bat, as well as stat buffs and debuffs, status effects, and even reflect breakers. In addition, her Personas all have multiple resistances, which change depending on the Persona, she switches to stronger Personas as her health lowers and she also occasionally uses the chainsaw from the fusion accidents. Oh, and think you're safe from All Out Attacks since she's just one body this time, nope! If you take your time dealing damage, she still instantly knocks everyone down, splits into the Twins, and kills everyone with an All Out Attack, complete with her own portrait.
  • Royal's True Final Boss, Takuto Maruki, is widely regarded as the best boss battle in perhaps the entire franchise. He starts off with his Persona, Azathoth, shielding him from your attacks with his tentacles; you and your team must take advantage of their weaknesses to chain up Baton Passes so you can hit Maruki for enormous damage before they regenerate. However, every time the tentacles regenerate, Maruki uses his Actualization powers to forbid you from using certain abilities during a turn, forcing you to either rethink your strategies or delay your attacks until he puts a new restraint. However, the battle doesn't stop there; Maruki manages to have a second Awakening mid-battle — just to show how much more powerful he is compared to the other targets you had to face and the Phantom Thieves combined: Azathoth transforms into Adam Kadmon, a giant mech that almost lets him have the upper hand against the Phantom Thieves. Keyword is almost, because at one point the Thieves all try to shield themselves from one of Adam Kadmon's skyscraper-leveling punches for Joker to climb up Adam and shoot its core to power it down. The final phase of the fight, although impossible to lose, still hits extremely hard: Joker and Maruki are both at their strength's end, and all they can do is throw weak punches against each other. This final boss not only is by far the game's biggest test in terms of how you mastered the game's battle mechanics, but also — just like the entire Palace beforehand — shows how different a target Maruki is compared to the other bosses; he is not driven by selfish gains at all, merely by the sheer sorrow of losing his girlfriend from a car accident that left her in a coma, and wants to use the powers of the Metaverse not to conduct any dastardly plans like Shido, but to create a perfect world so that no one needs to be hurt again out of his genuine desire not to make anyone suffer the same pain he had to go through. And that is made even more blatant by the vocal version of his battle theme, "Throw Away Your Mask", a somber, introspective song about Maruki's desire to not hurt anyone and how he also wants nothing but the best for the Phantom Thieves, even when he's facing them.
• Persona 5 Strikers: Shadow Konoe is an epic two-phase fight, fitting for the game's Climax Boss. First, you are up against his Humongous Mecha, which has a ton of impressive attacks that still give enough opportunities to dodge and counter, and you can climb to higher ground around the arena to hit him with railguns. Once the mech is destroyed, Akira The Hero himself proves to be even more capable in a fight without it, making it a no-holds-barred fight against one man in armor with a BFS. Both phases are also set to Awesome Music, the first to a rock remix of "Rivers in the Desert," and the second to an amazing new song, "Counterstrike." And finally, for many fans, the fact that he's weak to Ryuji's element makes it even better.

Digital Devil Saga series

• The Demi-Fiend, secret boss of Digital Devil Saga. You MUST be at level 99 with EACH character (and have maxed out EVERY single stat.), just to have a 50% chance of defeating him. And if you take even one skill that can give you any type of advantage (like the Monotheist mantra skill) he just uses an instant death attack that cannot be avoided (Gaea Rage) and it's game over.
  • And for that matter, the few strategies that can actually beat him are rather complex and still require some luck to work.
  • Fun fact. The developers of the game even had great difficulty fighting this boss, even in debug mode where you can see and edit the game's script.
  • The fight even uses some recurring music from a previous title... the random encounter theme. This is an accurate assessment of how much of a threat you pose to the boss, and the kind of highly specific BS you'll need to pull off to defeat him.
• Vritra is one of the most hyped up boss battles in Digital Devil Saga 2, with it being the dramatic rematch against Heat in a mutated deranged form, and it more than lives up to that hype. He cycles between a plethora of different wide-spread attacks while beating you senseless with his tentacles (which each have a dedicated press turn). Should you be frozen, he'll pounce on the opportunity to exploit the battle system à la Vasuki. Even if you take out the tentacles he'll simply regrow them given enough time. He's definitely one of the hardest bosses up to this point and makes stellar use of the second boss theme, "Hunting: Betrayal".
• Jack Frost. He's not fought often as a boss, but hoo boy is he a damn great boss in Digital Devil Saga 2. Taking a page from the first game's Vasuki and the second game's Vritra, he uses his Signature Move Breath to freeze enemies, then shatters them into oblivion with physical attacks. Say you come protected against Ice attacks. Fine, then. Eat Megidolaon, loser.

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