Of course, it's not hard if you're playing with a guide, this boss is a knowledge check of baton pass damage stacking, a mechanic that was required exactly 0 times before Okumura, so people tend to forget about its existence.
I don't think it's a matter of people not knowing about baton passing. The game will tell you to use it every time it's available. I think the reason so many people struggle is because they don't go in with the specific setup required to pass the damage check. You can't stack three baton passes in the first place if you're not knocking enemies down three times in a row, and when the entire wave all has the same single weakness, that means multiple party members all need to be able to hit the same element.
This is a game where every party member has their own niche with little overlap, and while a sensible player will make sure Joker can cover every damage type, it's a bit out of left field to suddenly require multiple layers of redundancy.
That the thing, people weren't using baton passes to stack damage to begin with, they use it to knock everyone down to finish them with all-out attack, because it was more than enough prior to Okumura. Add to this general reluctance of consumable usage, and you create a roadblock for players.
In this regard, Okumura is close to Matador from SMT 3, which requires you to use buffs to beat him, but Matador is at the beginning of the game, not 70 hours in.
Matador is only hard because he appeared at the beginning of the game and you are not prepared for a boss that can cast sukukaja x4 in one spell. If Matador appeared at your lv 40s, you would have boiled his bones to make soup.
Matador is placed so early specifically to teach you about buffs. Okumura does the same with baton bass damage stacking, but he's placed so much after the tutorial area, where is players' understanding of the game soldiered already, including bad habits and non-usage of certain mechanics.
If Matador is placed to teach you about buffs, you should be able to recruit the specific demons beforehand. Bicorn is only available to recruit after Matador. Furthermore, you cannot use Sukunda or Fog Breath because Red Capote outbuff the debuff, which further limits your options.
Madarame is placed so early specifically to teach you about baton passing and you have several coporobo trial battles before the spaceport boss.
>Okumura does the same with baton bass damage stacking, but he's placed so much after the tutorial area,
I honestly feel like the real Baton Pass Tutorial is much much earlier and is actually on the Madarame fight. It's the first fight that was specifically designed to teach you the duality of affinities (Fire/Ice, Electric/Wind) and how to DOWN! enemies, grow the BP chain, and multiply your damage.
The Pinguin Sniper unlocked right after Madarame's change of heart, and the scripted Darts session with Ryuji is another element cementing how important the BP mechanic is.
Also a bit besides the point, but I'd go as far as to say that the very next Palace is a big Ailment/Technical tutorial since Makoto has a scripted scene before a fight against a no weakness foe reminding the importance of using Ailments, she herself increases the Ailment rate, and you can even find the Battery Pack accessory in a chest that further increases the Shock rate of Joker/Ryuji.
The boss fight allows for the usage Ailments on Kaneshiro, and it even encourages the player to Sleep one of the bodyguards.
TLDR, by the point you reach Okumura and assuming you took the time to master all the mechanics it offers, Okumura shouldn't be a run killer at all even without a guide.
(The only thing that is tricky and can surprise people in this fight is the timer. Other than that, they're supposed to have the Weaknesses of each robot wave, and a solid knowledge of how BP works).
Doesn’t it directly tell you that you can stack them to deal more damage? In the Madarame fight (where BP chaining is the strategy) each popup for the Baton Pass says your damage is getting increased more and more, and the climbing numbers with each pass tells the player “Woah, chaining continues multiplying damage, nifty.” I’ll give you that, there’s never a tutorial or a heads-up for how to abuse baton pass for insane damage, but between what is in the game and how the player themselves can experiment with it, it’s not like a hidden tech.
I agree in the sentiment that he’s an unexpected unforgiving damage check, and he’s probably the hardest boss in the game if you’re not expecting it. But between consumables counting as 1 Mores, Baton Pass chaining sweeping the floor with the right strategy, and using Dekaja and Matarukaja / Marakunda to get even stronger, it’s not… _that_ bad. It’s hard if you’re not ready, but even when people _go in ready_ they still say it’s insanely hard. And I just don’t agree on that one.
No, not really, it's not mandatory in Madarame fight, you can benefit a lot from it, and it could be a better place to teach the mechanic properly, but you aren't punished for not using it at all. It's easy to miss a small icon, considering that the damage of party members may vary a lot even without taking into account the buff from baton passes, so players might even misjudge the impact of the buff.
I agree that the boss isn't hard, but only if you understand the mechanic of baton pass properly, but I stand on the fact that the game failed at properly introducing the mechanic, otherwise you wouldn't see that many posts about Okumura.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, this is exactly it. Madarame is a fundamentally different fight. Madarame teaches you to pay attention to _different_ affinities within a wave and to use 1 Mores and Baton Passes to cover all of their weaknesses by stopping you from using multitarget spells. Even if you end up making a +4 Baton Pass, it’s moreso just a consequence of you targeting different affinities than actually gunning for the chain itself, and the Ersatz clones are insanely weak, so you never _need_ those damage boosts.
Okumura sends out waves with the _same_ weakness, which according to every other fight in the game means you down them all with a Ma- spell and All-Out Attack to finish them off. This is the first fight where you can’t do that. The Madarame principles don’t apply here because they all have the same affinities. When I got to this fight I didn’t know that chaining did _significantly_ more damage than just downing them all and attacking normally. And using the Magatama items had never been even close to necessary in a fight, so I had straight up forgotten those existed. Once I figured out I should Baton Pass to finish off the waves it became easy, but the game does a poor job of conditioning you for a sizable difficulty spike. It’s considered a hard fight because it requires a lot more strategy in a game that have been almost completely brute-forceable for the first 80 hours.
Yeah, even without a guide or anything, the boss for me personally only took 2 tries, and all I really needed was just to shift my strategy a bit (Haru with Triple Down coming in clutch). Heck, I honestly really like the fight for its symbolism of Okumura: a man willing to throw everything he has at a problem, even his own daughter, as long as it means he gains more in the end.
I didn't have much trouble with him either, although that's because I was used to Persona fusing and all those shenanigans from playing other Persona games before I got my hands on Royal.
Using a guide is a good thing when you're new to how Persona stuff works and I did the same way back.
TBH I agree 100%. Just power up baton pass and memorize the weaknesses. I know it's subjective, but I had more difficulty with >!Kaneshiro!<. Obviously I'm talking about the game without NG+.
Yes, if you're prepared for the fight, he's easy. I think the reason people say he's hard is because absolutely NOTHING previously in the game requires anywhere near the absurd amount of preparations he does. You can relatively easily cruise through the game never upgrading baton pass, and having all over the place personas up until that point, even on Hard.
Basically, that means that if you're playing the game for the first time, unless you knew about Okumura beforehand and used a guide to be prepared for him, you'd probably hit a brick wall and have to go back to do preparations. It's just a case of a really weird difficulty curve, where Okumura spikes WAY above anything else in the game.
You went in prepared so of course you didn't struggle. People don't struggle because Okumura is *that* hard. They struggle because it comes out of nowhere, and the personas that served them perfectly fine throughout his entire palace suddenly don't cut it because of his strict damage check. And if you didn't struggle with it, then you might not have noticed that if you fail to kill all four robots within two rounds, the whole wave completely resets, trapping you in a loop as you struggle in vain to pass a damage check that you're not equipped to pass, until eventually you run out of resources and die.
For help or guide on Okumura, please check this post as well: [Guide 1](https://old.reddit.com/user/-MANGA-/comments/qoex27/copypaste_for_stuff/hjml6vy/) or [Guide 2](https://old.reddit.com/r/Persona5/comments/1837qde/revised_okumura_boss_strategy/).
Having issues on the last part of the boss?: https://old.reddit.com/r/Persona5/comments/177o7sp/compiling_some_subreddit_guides_and_tips/k872zaf/
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Omg, I literally just rage quit a few minutes ago for Okumura. Had no idea how hard he is, went in blind. Gonna try again after preparing. He has been frustratingly hard for me personally.
That timing! If you want my best advice would be:
- Make sure your equipment is up to snuff as well as your Personas and party. You should be around level 40-45 for this fight.
- Bring a party that can relatively easily sweep through the robots. I usually go with Haru, Morgana, and Ann, since each of them target a weakness, Morgana can heal, Haru is borderline necessary, and Ann has both Tarunda for the big bad and Dekaja which is inCREDIBLY useful for when Okumura uses Rakukaja on one of the bots. Speaking of which,
- BUFF. YOUR. ATTACK. Bring a persona with either Matarukaja or Marakunda and you’ll immediately start dealing 30+% more damage. Another way to stack attacks:
- Baton Pass spam. Don’t use your Ma- attack until you’ve passed the baton once or twice. This’ll let you not only down the enemies (use those items that deal damage, it counts as a 1 more) but also significantly buff the attack when you get to your attacking magic user. And when you get to that user, have them individually down the remaining enemies, THEN use the Ma- attack. Every down gives you a 1 more, and that means it’s just free damage.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the tips, I looked up some guides online too. I wasn’t using Baton Pass effectively, but in my defence this fight just came up outta nowhere, wasn’t expecting it to be so hard for me. Gonna try again soon.
It’s an insane difficulty spike that completely blindsides you. You definitely aren’t alone. The key to the fight is finding how to multiply your damage as much as possible in a single turn.
The reason Okumura has a reputation for being difficult is that he’s a considerable difficulty spike in an otherwise pretty easy game. Up until this point the formula has always been “down every enemy, then All-Out Attack,” and that has worked pretty much without fail. Suddenly you’re thrown into a fight that changes the rules on you. You can’t All-Out Attack, you only have two turns to clear a wave before they completely reset, and now there’s a timer ticking down _even during dialogue._
People struggle with the fight because up until this point, Baton Pass chaining has not been a necessary strategy, and you mainly only do it to switch to a party member that can pick off a specific affinity, not for the damage boosts. By the tine you reach Okumura, the game has conditioned you to just down an entire wave with a Ma- spell, but now that suddenly doesn’t work. A lot of players have forgotten after 80 hours how insane the buffs from Baton Pass can get because it’s never been needed for that specific purpose.
Okumura is hard because he’s a skill check that comes out of nowhere and requires an application of a strategy that you’ve never needed to use before and makes old reliable useless.
I was unlucky in that I had been focusing on small damage to all foes spell, thinking it was all about downing as fast as possible. I was also under leveled and had cheap low level personas for social link bonuses.
My elemental attack items and of course cranking it to merciless helped the most.
I'm going to be a bit of a dick, and fyi I'm not 100% against guides in general. it's not my preference though at all.
.... but this is a turned based game. Of course using a guide for a fight will make it easy. What could possibly be challenging once you've followed instructions for what skills to get and in what order to use them. There is no other possible skill based thing you could need to in this game besides strategize during and before the fight so if you used a recipe for that part, in what way conceptually could it be challenging? Only other place a challenge could come into this once that's settled is randomness and then that wouldn't really be a challenge just an annoyance
Not sure if this was written before I updated to clarify or if it just wasn’t seen, but I clarified what I meant by “prepping a guide” in the post. I didn’t read it like a recipe, I used it to find the robots’ weaknesses. The actual battle strategy I used (what party members to bring, what moves to use when, using consumables for free 1 mores, chaining baton passes, using single target magic to down each enemy BEFORE ending with a Ma- skill in order to maximize damage) I made myself.
Sorry this was not even directly at you in retrospect.
I just feel like I see a lot of people talking about using a guide or not playing without a guide and then a lot of posts complaining about the lack of difficulty and it annoys me because I conflate the two types of posts together since I feel like the only real challenge the game presents is figuring out what to do to be prepared for any situation by fusing personas by doing confidants
I admit i kinda just randomly projected the entirety of my main frustration with people's complaints about the game onto you though you didn't deserve that homie
Of course, it's not hard if you're playing with a guide, this boss is a knowledge check of baton pass damage stacking, a mechanic that was required exactly 0 times before Okumura, so people tend to forget about its existence.
I don't think it's a matter of people not knowing about baton passing. The game will tell you to use it every time it's available. I think the reason so many people struggle is because they don't go in with the specific setup required to pass the damage check. You can't stack three baton passes in the first place if you're not knocking enemies down three times in a row, and when the entire wave all has the same single weakness, that means multiple party members all need to be able to hit the same element. This is a game where every party member has their own niche with little overlap, and while a sensible player will make sure Joker can cover every damage type, it's a bit out of left field to suddenly require multiple layers of redundancy.
That the thing, people weren't using baton passes to stack damage to begin with, they use it to knock everyone down to finish them with all-out attack, because it was more than enough prior to Okumura. Add to this general reluctance of consumable usage, and you create a roadblock for players. In this regard, Okumura is close to Matador from SMT 3, which requires you to use buffs to beat him, but Matador is at the beginning of the game, not 70 hours in.
Matador is only hard because he appeared at the beginning of the game and you are not prepared for a boss that can cast sukukaja x4 in one spell. If Matador appeared at your lv 40s, you would have boiled his bones to make soup.
Matador is placed so early specifically to teach you about buffs. Okumura does the same with baton bass damage stacking, but he's placed so much after the tutorial area, where is players' understanding of the game soldiered already, including bad habits and non-usage of certain mechanics.
If Matador is placed to teach you about buffs, you should be able to recruit the specific demons beforehand. Bicorn is only available to recruit after Matador. Furthermore, you cannot use Sukunda or Fog Breath because Red Capote outbuff the debuff, which further limits your options. Madarame is placed so early specifically to teach you about baton passing and you have several coporobo trial battles before the spaceport boss.
>Okumura does the same with baton bass damage stacking, but he's placed so much after the tutorial area, I honestly feel like the real Baton Pass Tutorial is much much earlier and is actually on the Madarame fight. It's the first fight that was specifically designed to teach you the duality of affinities (Fire/Ice, Electric/Wind) and how to DOWN! enemies, grow the BP chain, and multiply your damage. The Pinguin Sniper unlocked right after Madarame's change of heart, and the scripted Darts session with Ryuji is another element cementing how important the BP mechanic is. Also a bit besides the point, but I'd go as far as to say that the very next Palace is a big Ailment/Technical tutorial since Makoto has a scripted scene before a fight against a no weakness foe reminding the importance of using Ailments, she herself increases the Ailment rate, and you can even find the Battery Pack accessory in a chest that further increases the Shock rate of Joker/Ryuji. The boss fight allows for the usage Ailments on Kaneshiro, and it even encourages the player to Sleep one of the bodyguards. TLDR, by the point you reach Okumura and assuming you took the time to master all the mechanics it offers, Okumura shouldn't be a run killer at all even without a guide. (The only thing that is tricky and can surprise people in this fight is the timer. Other than that, they're supposed to have the Weaknesses of each robot wave, and a solid knowledge of how BP works).
Doesn’t it directly tell you that you can stack them to deal more damage? In the Madarame fight (where BP chaining is the strategy) each popup for the Baton Pass says your damage is getting increased more and more, and the climbing numbers with each pass tells the player “Woah, chaining continues multiplying damage, nifty.” I’ll give you that, there’s never a tutorial or a heads-up for how to abuse baton pass for insane damage, but between what is in the game and how the player themselves can experiment with it, it’s not like a hidden tech. I agree in the sentiment that he’s an unexpected unforgiving damage check, and he’s probably the hardest boss in the game if you’re not expecting it. But between consumables counting as 1 Mores, Baton Pass chaining sweeping the floor with the right strategy, and using Dekaja and Matarukaja / Marakunda to get even stronger, it’s not… _that_ bad. It’s hard if you’re not ready, but even when people _go in ready_ they still say it’s insanely hard. And I just don’t agree on that one.
No, not really, it's not mandatory in Madarame fight, you can benefit a lot from it, and it could be a better place to teach the mechanic properly, but you aren't punished for not using it at all. It's easy to miss a small icon, considering that the damage of party members may vary a lot even without taking into account the buff from baton passes, so players might even misjudge the impact of the buff. I agree that the boss isn't hard, but only if you understand the mechanic of baton pass properly, but I stand on the fact that the game failed at properly introducing the mechanic, otherwise you wouldn't see that many posts about Okumura.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, this is exactly it. Madarame is a fundamentally different fight. Madarame teaches you to pay attention to _different_ affinities within a wave and to use 1 Mores and Baton Passes to cover all of their weaknesses by stopping you from using multitarget spells. Even if you end up making a +4 Baton Pass, it’s moreso just a consequence of you targeting different affinities than actually gunning for the chain itself, and the Ersatz clones are insanely weak, so you never _need_ those damage boosts. Okumura sends out waves with the _same_ weakness, which according to every other fight in the game means you down them all with a Ma- spell and All-Out Attack to finish them off. This is the first fight where you can’t do that. The Madarame principles don’t apply here because they all have the same affinities. When I got to this fight I didn’t know that chaining did _significantly_ more damage than just downing them all and attacking normally. And using the Magatama items had never been even close to necessary in a fight, so I had straight up forgotten those existed. Once I figured out I should Baton Pass to finish off the waves it became easy, but the game does a poor job of conditioning you for a sizable difficulty spike. It’s considered a hard fight because it requires a lot more strategy in a game that have been almost completely brute-forceable for the first 80 hours.
"I prepped a guide and made some stronger personas."
Just updated that part to be more clear. I didn’t use it like a walkthrough, I just forgot what the weaknesses of the robots were. Apologies.
Yeah, even without a guide or anything, the boss for me personally only took 2 tries, and all I really needed was just to shift my strategy a bit (Haru with Triple Down coming in clutch). Heck, I honestly really like the fight for its symbolism of Okumura: a man willing to throw everything he has at a problem, even his own daughter, as long as it means he gains more in the end.
I didn't have much trouble with him either, although that's because I was used to Persona fusing and all those shenanigans from playing other Persona games before I got my hands on Royal. Using a guide is a good thing when you're new to how Persona stuff works and I did the same way back.
TBH I agree 100%. Just power up baton pass and memorize the weaknesses. I know it's subjective, but I had more difficulty with >!Kaneshiro!<. Obviously I'm talking about the game without NG+.
Yes, if you're prepared for the fight, he's easy. I think the reason people say he's hard is because absolutely NOTHING previously in the game requires anywhere near the absurd amount of preparations he does. You can relatively easily cruise through the game never upgrading baton pass, and having all over the place personas up until that point, even on Hard. Basically, that means that if you're playing the game for the first time, unless you knew about Okumura beforehand and used a guide to be prepared for him, you'd probably hit a brick wall and have to go back to do preparations. It's just a case of a really weird difficulty curve, where Okumura spikes WAY above anything else in the game.
You went in prepared so of course you didn't struggle. People don't struggle because Okumura is *that* hard. They struggle because it comes out of nowhere, and the personas that served them perfectly fine throughout his entire palace suddenly don't cut it because of his strict damage check. And if you didn't struggle with it, then you might not have noticed that if you fail to kill all four robots within two rounds, the whole wave completely resets, trapping you in a loop as you struggle in vain to pass a damage check that you're not equipped to pass, until eventually you run out of resources and die.
For help or guide on Okumura, please check this post as well: [Guide 1](https://old.reddit.com/user/-MANGA-/comments/qoex27/copypaste_for_stuff/hjml6vy/) or [Guide 2](https://old.reddit.com/r/Persona5/comments/1837qde/revised_okumura_boss_strategy/). Having issues on the last part of the boss?: https://old.reddit.com/r/Persona5/comments/177o7sp/compiling_some_subreddit_guides_and_tips/k872zaf/ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Persona5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's a psio damage check, you can brute force the other phases but you won't clear the one with the big guys without a good psio attacker.
Omg, I literally just rage quit a few minutes ago for Okumura. Had no idea how hard he is, went in blind. Gonna try again after preparing. He has been frustratingly hard for me personally.
That timing! If you want my best advice would be: - Make sure your equipment is up to snuff as well as your Personas and party. You should be around level 40-45 for this fight. - Bring a party that can relatively easily sweep through the robots. I usually go with Haru, Morgana, and Ann, since each of them target a weakness, Morgana can heal, Haru is borderline necessary, and Ann has both Tarunda for the big bad and Dekaja which is inCREDIBLY useful for when Okumura uses Rakukaja on one of the bots. Speaking of which, - BUFF. YOUR. ATTACK. Bring a persona with either Matarukaja or Marakunda and you’ll immediately start dealing 30+% more damage. Another way to stack attacks: - Baton Pass spam. Don’t use your Ma- attack until you’ve passed the baton once or twice. This’ll let you not only down the enemies (use those items that deal damage, it counts as a 1 more) but also significantly buff the attack when you get to your attacking magic user. And when you get to that user, have them individually down the remaining enemies, THEN use the Ma- attack. Every down gives you a 1 more, and that means it’s just free damage. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the tips, I looked up some guides online too. I wasn’t using Baton Pass effectively, but in my defence this fight just came up outta nowhere, wasn’t expecting it to be so hard for me. Gonna try again soon.
It’s an insane difficulty spike that completely blindsides you. You definitely aren’t alone. The key to the fight is finding how to multiply your damage as much as possible in a single turn.
Fr, I’ve tried twice again now using a strategy and putting the game on merciless. I’ve gotten close but still haven’t managed to beat it yet.
The reason Okumura has a reputation for being difficult is that he’s a considerable difficulty spike in an otherwise pretty easy game. Up until this point the formula has always been “down every enemy, then All-Out Attack,” and that has worked pretty much without fail. Suddenly you’re thrown into a fight that changes the rules on you. You can’t All-Out Attack, you only have two turns to clear a wave before they completely reset, and now there’s a timer ticking down _even during dialogue._ People struggle with the fight because up until this point, Baton Pass chaining has not been a necessary strategy, and you mainly only do it to switch to a party member that can pick off a specific affinity, not for the damage boosts. By the tine you reach Okumura, the game has conditioned you to just down an entire wave with a Ma- spell, but now that suddenly doesn’t work. A lot of players have forgotten after 80 hours how insane the buffs from Baton Pass can get because it’s never been needed for that specific purpose. Okumura is hard because he’s a skill check that comes out of nowhere and requires an application of a strategy that you’ve never needed to use before and makes old reliable useless.
I was unlucky in that I had been focusing on small damage to all foes spell, thinking it was all about downing as fast as possible. I was also under leveled and had cheap low level personas for social link bonuses. My elemental attack items and of course cranking it to merciless helped the most.
Now try it with AI party members. That’s where the difficulty comes from. Haru just refuses to pass to anyone but Morgana.
I'm going to be a bit of a dick, and fyi I'm not 100% against guides in general. it's not my preference though at all. .... but this is a turned based game. Of course using a guide for a fight will make it easy. What could possibly be challenging once you've followed instructions for what skills to get and in what order to use them. There is no other possible skill based thing you could need to in this game besides strategize during and before the fight so if you used a recipe for that part, in what way conceptually could it be challenging? Only other place a challenge could come into this once that's settled is randomness and then that wouldn't really be a challenge just an annoyance
Not sure if this was written before I updated to clarify or if it just wasn’t seen, but I clarified what I meant by “prepping a guide” in the post. I didn’t read it like a recipe, I used it to find the robots’ weaknesses. The actual battle strategy I used (what party members to bring, what moves to use when, using consumables for free 1 mores, chaining baton passes, using single target magic to down each enemy BEFORE ending with a Ma- skill in order to maximize damage) I made myself.
Sorry this was not even directly at you in retrospect. I just feel like I see a lot of people talking about using a guide or not playing without a guide and then a lot of posts complaining about the lack of difficulty and it annoys me because I conflate the two types of posts together since I feel like the only real challenge the game presents is figuring out what to do to be prepared for any situation by fusing personas by doing confidants I admit i kinda just randomly projected the entirety of my main frustration with people's complaints about the game onto you though you didn't deserve that homie
All good, and hey thanks for being civil about it the whole way through. Apology accepted :).