Persona 3 Reload does its best to be fair, but it features some hard deadlines. On each full moon of the year, a powerful Shadow will threaten the city, and if you can't defeat them, it's game over. Your only chance then is to Rewind the game and try something different.
For the first real boss fight of Persona 3 Reload, the mysterious boy will warn the main character a week in advance. If you haven't yet, you should spend that week training in Tartarus and trying to reach floor 22. Players who manage this shouldn't have much trouble, but those who haven't may find the fight against the Priestess to be nearly impossible.
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The Monorail Gauntlet
Before you even get a chance to fight the Priestess, you have to fight your way from one end of the monorail to the other. Junpei will run ahead no matter what you say to him, so the first two fights are with just the main character and Yukari.
The first fight is against two Spurious Books, and the second fight has two Spurious Books and one Heat Balance. It's very helpful to have a Persona with Zio for these fights, because Spurious Books are weak to electricity damage. Heat Balance enemies are also weak to Zio, but Yukari's Garu also works on them.
You'll eventually catch up with Junpei, who's facing three enemies. Combat will begin with Junpei back on the team, and the enemy group is one Spurious Book, one Heat Balance, and one Dancing Hand. The Dancing Hand is weak to Junpei's Agi skill.
After the fight ends, the monorail will start moving and a fourth group of shadows attack: two Dancing Hands and one Heat Balance. Don't worry about the monorail moving just yet and heal if you need to, because the boss battle is coming up next.
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The Priestess Boss
The Shadow that's taken over the monorail is simply named Priestess, after the second Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. For anyone wondering, the hand monster at the start of the game was the Magician, and the main character counts as the Fool.
As the fight begins, Mitsuru will mention that you have 30 real-time minutes until the monorail train crashes into the other train on the track. This seems like a generous amount of time, but that's only an illusion.
The first thing to know is that, as a true boss enemy, the Priestess has no weaknesses. Even a Critical hit won't knock her down. In addition, she reflects ice damage and is immune to status effects and instant-death skills. The only way to deal with her is to slowly but steadily chip away at her health bar with all your best damage skills.
The Priestess has two primary actions: Summon and Invitation to Chaos. Summon lets her bring in up to two Tiara enemies. The Loathsome Tiara is weak to Garu, the Skeptical Tiara is weak to Zio, and the Despairing Tiara is weak to Agi. The fight ends when you defeat the Priestess, but it's still worth defeating the Tiaras. After all, every turn the Priestess spends summoning Tiaras is a turn she doesn't spend casting Bufu spells on the party.
The Priestess's second special skill, Invitation to Chaos, causes the train to speed up. This reduces the timer by 15 minutes the first time, and then by 7 minutes the second time. So for all intents and purposes, the fight's real timer gives you 8 minutes. If for some reason you wait until the timer reaches 22 minutes before you do anything, you'll lose the fight. The Priestess always uses Invitation to Chaos after she takes a certain amount of damage, and she'll only ever use it twice.
If you keep up the pressure, the Priestess should spend most of her turns on Summon and Invitation to Chaos. Keeping her in this loop will make this boss fight easy, and you can beat her in under four minutes even if you spend some of that time destroying her Tiaras.
Persona 3 Reload
- Franchise
- Persona
- Platform(s)
- PC , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Xbox One , PS4 , PS5
- Developer(s)
- P-Studio
- Publisher(s)
- Atlus
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence
