Bosses

Every Jail Monarch in Persona 5 Strikers is fought the same way for the first thirty seconds. You open with the three debuffs, Tarunda, Rakunda and Sukunda, you answer them with the matching buffs, and then you start hitting whatever the boss is weak to until its stagger shield gives way and an All-Out Attack or a Showtime becomes available. Four of our five boss pages name that opener in the same words, and the Alice page trims it to Rakunda and Tarukaja. Where they differ is the third step, so this guide sorts the fights by how many damage types actually crack the shield: three bosses give you two, one gives you a single named element, and one gives you nothing at all and makes you win with ailments and furniture instead.

Two of the seven Monarchs, Ango Natsume in Sendai and Akira Konoe in Osaka, have no page of their own yet, which is why the story order in the table skips from first to third and from fourth to sixth. Both still turn up as rematches on our requests and Jails guide, where the Painful Past and Painful Past+ rematches, which exist for five of the seven Monarchs and include both of these, are listed with their payouts.

Two ways in: Alice, Mariko and the Demiurge

Mad Rabbit Alice is the gentlest introduction the game offers and the one of the five where our page gives the fullest ledger: 6,000 HP, a stagger gauge of eight, and rewards for all three tiers, 1,000 EXP plus 10,400 yen for the base-game clear, 700 and 8,736 in Painful Past, 13,000 and 50,700 in Painful Past+. She folds to Fire and Wind, so the recommended trio is Morgana, Ann and Ryuji, with Joker keeping Rakunda on her and Ryuji buffing himself for the first half. The arena decides the fight more than the elements do. There is a pole in the middle and party crackers around the rim, and our page is blunt about which to use: spinning on the pole leaves you unable to dodge anything, while the crackers hurt her from a distance and, saved for the right moment, interrupt the pole dance that ends in an arena-wide shockwave. At half health she changes stance and speeds up, which is when Ryuji spreads Tarukaja to everyone, the Fire and Wind skills come out, and the shield breaks for the All-Out Attack.

Snow Empress Mariko has more than double Alice's health at 12,800 and roughly eight shields to strip, but her weaknesses are Psy and Curse, so Joker's Arsene and Noir's Milady do most of the shield work. Her two signature moves both need a piece of the room to undo: Dinner Time swallows a party member, who is only released when a chandelier lands on her or a Showtime goes off, and Freeze and Shiver drops a blizzard that slows the whole party until someone hits a heater. Mabufula can freeze you outright, so Amrita Drop belongs on somebody's skill list before you go in. Note that you cannot even reach her until the Shield Lock Keeper is down, which is covered with the rest of that mini-boss family in our mechanics guide.

The False God Demiurge is the final boss and, on paper, the widest door of the three: both forms are weak to Bless and Curse. The catch is what each form shrugs off. Form one resists Fire, Ice, Electricity and Wind, form two resists Psy and Nuke, so the elemental staggering our page recommends has to be chosen per form. The first form is mostly a dodging exam. Stand in the gap between the five beams of Light of Judgement, get out from in front of it for Arrows of Light, keep moving during Enclosing Wings, and reposition constantly against the Homing Beam. Emptying that health bar triggers a transition where three big spells land in sequence: back off and circle for Maragidyne, double jump from the centre through three waves of Mabufudyne, and keep moving out of the marked ground for Maziodyne. The second form adds two scepter attacks, both answered by double jumping and then punishing with air combos. Debilitate from Joker or Wolf and Heat Riser from Joker, Skull or Wolf replace the three separate debuffs and buffs here, and the rhythm is Bless and Curse while the shield is up, baton pass to a physical attacker while it is down.

One way in: Kuon Ichinose

The sixth boss is really three encounters. First comes a scripted duel against Sophie, and our page says to pick anyone, lead with Curse because she is weak to it, and not to bother emptying her bar since the scene ends on its own. Then a wave of Shadows arrives, best handled by the ailment specialists, meaning Joker, Panther, Fox and Noir. Only then does Hecatoncheires, the Hundred-Armed Watcher, step in, and Bless is the one weakness our page names for it. That makes Sophia the key party member: Joker holds its attention while she gets into position, then her Bless attacks take large bites out of its health. It opens the fight with Attack Master, which casts Tarukaja on itself at the start, and it carries Endure, so a lethal hit leaves it standing on 1 HP and you will have to knock it down and All-Out Attack it more than once. Our page suggests Joker, Panther, Noir and Sophia at level 65 or higher, with the debuffs coming from Joker and Panther and the buffs from Joker and Noir.

No way in: Akane's Joker

Akane's Joker is a Shadow built from all of the Phantom Thieves at once, and the price of that is a boss with no strengths and no weaknesses. It is also a one-on-one duel, so you control Joker alone and every trick you would normally hand to a teammate has to come from his own Persona stock. Our page recommends level 45 or above and lists a stagger gauge of only four, which is the shortest in this set, but with no element to exploit the gauge has to be filled another way. The page gives four: win the quick-time exchanges that open the fight and recur whenever it staggers; land Burn, Freeze or Shock, plus mental ailments such as Dizzy from Nocturnal Flash or Fear from Evil Touch, and follow each one with the technical damage that matches it; use Almighty attacks, which the page singles out as the effective option against a boss with no weakness, with Charge or Concentrate stacked under them; and use the room. Phantom Dash onto the lamp post and spin for physical damage, or lure the boss next to the motorbike and destroy it, which hurts and applies Dizzy and Burn in one go. Keep distance otherwise, because it carries the same buffs and debuffs you do. Clearing Kyoto Jail behind it pays 9,800 EXP and 40,040 yen and the Cage of Wrath Collapsed trophy, and the route through the Jail's shrine puzzle to reach the arena is on our Kyoto Jail walkthrough.

What the boss pages tell you to bring

Four of the five pages repeat one piece of preparation: walk in with HP and SP recovery items, either bought from vending machines, shops, restaurants and food stands or cooked by Joker from ingredients. The Alice page is the exception, and all it asks is that you save your SP for her second half. Our cooking recipes page lists where each recipe comes from, and the wider question of how SP is spent and recovered is the spine of our mechanics guide. Beyond that, the pages differ on party by design: bring the Fire and Wind users to Alice, the Psy and Curse users to Mariko, Sophia to Hecatoncheires, a Bless and Curse pair to the Demiurge, and only Joker to his own shadow. If you are deciding who to level for all of that, the best characters page makes the case for Queen, Panther, Fox, Sophia and Joker, and the wider run of cities these fights sit inside is laid out on our Persona 5 Strikers guide.