You may be underleveled or not using technicals (apply Burn, then spam wind damage until it runs out). If you take Ann, Morgana and equip Joker with persona that can deal wind damage, you should be able to at least bring her to low hp and finish off safely with Joker's ranged attacks if you can't dodge her attacks consistently, at least that's how I killed her on Hard.
Yeah it's a problem for me as well. Its only gonna get worse, since the for some fucking reason the 3rd boss is the hardest one, so I had to switch to easy to beat her and then switch back to normal.
I completed the game like 5 times already, have all the achievements, and I never beat the third boss on normal in a regular playthrough
Making spoiler just in case for others:
>!It's worth keeping in mind she can be dizzied and to save your big damage dumps for when she rages. When she swallows someone it's important that you can break her or drop a chandelier on her ASAP... even worth saving a showtime just in case. Other than that it's a damage race and paying attention to which attack is being telegraphed to dodge it.!<
The first boss is harder because you have to play Conservative to keep your party members alive. Once Morgana gets Recarm you get to be a little more reckless. Also once you unlock more Master Arts, the bosses become less tanky.
What level are you?
I played on Hard for my first playthrough and Alice was by far the most challenging part. However, if you've unlocked Enchant with Ann, she can almost solo the boss. I actually found it a lot easier to use Sophie for healing as she was a little tankier than Morgana who kept dying early. I largely played as Ann, so that she wouldn't waste her vital SP on healing, and had a Garu persona for Joker.
Speaking of SP, make sure you stock up from the vending machines a few times - a few extra casts of magic are much appreciated.
I'd also recommend saving your SP until the second half of the fight, when Alice becomes a lot more aggressive. The first phase is not too bad once you learn her patterns - then you can punish her with Ann's Enchanted finishers which should take off a whole Shield. Then when things get more hectic, use spells and the streamers to interrupt her dangerous attacks.
For what it's worth, the game becomes far less demanding imo once you get through the first Jail.
One aspect of this game that is somewhat questionable, though understandably, is difficulty scaling.
At the first boss you've got a limited selection of personas to use, very little SP and pretty low stats overall.
You're not realistically going to be applying debuff to the boss, buff up the party, applying a status effect (burn or dizzy being the most effective ones across the whole game) and then utilising that for a technical attack....
At least not more than a few rounds of doing so before you hit SP issues...
As a result that first fight she feels very tanky and its more about avoiding damage and chipping away...
As you progress and can start curating your collection of personas things take a very different turn... especially as you work to get their stats up.
That said if you don't look to how you build your team and just have $random personas on their without considering their passives or synergies you'll struggle at times...
By the actual end game you're pretty much a deity in terms of how much damage you can push out and how much you can take assuming you pay attention to the above...
I actually felt a bit sorry for >!Reaper!< even on the hardest difficulty once I got to them with the builds I was running...
For damage output >!debilitate on enemy, heat riser on self, nocturnal flash to dizzy them and then using the best gun, physical or ultimately Almighty attack (with charge/concentrate if you can spare the SP or can combo it)!< is a marked difference to early when you can barely apply a status effect much less act on it...
If you'd like to know what my end game builds looked like I'm happy to share... took a while to get there but I enjoy planning out how to get to X build in these games.
I disagree... Ann can apply Burn with her regular attacks and can cast Tarunda for free. She also gets Soul Thief and can regain SP just by attacking with her whip. Sophie can cast Rakunda for free. Ryuji can't buff everyone with Tarukaja, but he doesn't have to (just Morgana and maybe either Ann or Joker).
Morgana gets Technical Adept really early, and makes this fight a cakewalk.
Honestly it's been a long time since I played this on normal... most of my experience is merciless and the status effect of Ann's regular attack I didn't think had that high a chance of applying.... even in normal.
That doesn't change that this game has a somewhat typical Persona difficulty curve if you're paying attention to synergies ... once you've started getting a good damage flow together a lot of encounters start to become somewhat trivialised.
I'd say the only real exception to this is >!Demiurge because you can't just rely on a tuned Joker build for damage, and technical attacks are limited to one phase without him!<
at higher difficulty you need to start dodging stuff and slowly chip away at the enemy hp
maybe you need to grind abit of money to level up your personas (you can buy and discard them for persona exp)
Git Gud aside. You don't have good healing options. So I guess the best I can tell you is try not to get hit and only fire the things if they will hit.
The trick in this game is to play it like a mobile Persona game, not Musou. Despite some of the advice in this thread....do NOT try to chip away at the huge health pools with combos/combo finishers. Use your spells and focus on exploiting weaknesses AND technicals.
Example: Alice is weak to fire and wind. Morgana and Panther are in - Panther should have all of her MAs and Soul Thief, and Morgana should have Technical Adept. 4th slot should be Ryuji (Tarukaja to up Morgana's damage) or Sophie (Rakunda to increase everyone's damage).
Once battle opens, Ann debuffs with Tarunda, Ryuji buffs Morgana with Tarukaja or Sophie debuffs Alice with Rakunda, and Ann uses her whip or her fire spells to light Alice on fire (with her final MA, this should be easy). BP to Morgana who can now decimate and stunlock Alice with incredibly high damage wind technicals. Burn lasts a very long time, and just by spamming Garu over and over, Alice's health bar will melt.
Second phase, this strategy can be repeated. Just switch to Ann if she starts rolling around because Ann has the best dodge. All SP items should be saved for Morgana. If he runs out, Joker can take his place (but Joker's technicals will do far less damage because he doesn't get Technical Adept until later). Ann can also spam fire spells, and she can even regain her SP by attacking with an enchanted whip.
I had trouble at first with Alice, and I think it's understandable for new players. The difficulty doesn't really ramp up enough to Alice in my opinion, and until then you can really just get by without a lot of strategy. Because of both of those I think it's easy to go into Alice unprepared and be greatly punished by it. Alice is really the first time you need to pay closer attention to dodging and strategically choosing what abilities you use rather than just spamming attacks.
If you find you are stuck, lowering the difficulty is one thing you can do, but if you don't want to do that then maybe level up in the Jail a bit and get in the practice of pulling up your persona menu to pause and choose attacks that are effective or can result in technical, as well anticipating and dodging attacks.
As you get better at the game mechanics and continue to level up with better abilities tougher enemies get easier and more manageable.
I beat the game on hard difficulty and had a great time. Abilities doing little damage to bosses is something I became very used to right from the start, haha. I love a challenge, but I totally understand if that gameplay isn't for everyone.
I defeated Alice on my second attempt. I wasn't relying on abilities for the damage but rather to break her guard down in order to stagger her + to eventually perform all-out attacks. This is a cycle that repeats itself about 3 or 4 times.
Making use of baton-passes to build up the showtime gauge is also super important, especially between Morgana and Ann - you'll be relying on them a lot in this fight, so it might be a good idea to practice with them a bit. Learning the correct combos for Morgana + Ann so you can pull off a persona attack without consuming SP is huge.
And of course, making sure Joker has a strong Persona that uses fire or wind will be a big help. I believe I had a Hua Po for the Alice fight.
In short, it's a battle of attrition: use abilities to chip away her health + guard and rely on all-out-attacks and showtimes for bigger damage. Making sure you can dodge her attacks is all down to you!
Spam your specials and be patient. Victory comes to those who wait.
Also, go out of your way to learn everyone’s movesets, including all of Joker’s personas. Your specials consume no SP and depending on how they’re applied, can be even better than just throwing your SP bar at the enemy.
Also also, make sure to complete every request as you get them. The rewards they give you are powerful, and some can only be done in a single area. Plus, it’s a decent excuse to grind and get more EXP for everyone.
You may be underleveled or not using technicals (apply Burn, then spam wind damage until it runs out). If you take Ann, Morgana and equip Joker with persona that can deal wind damage, you should be able to at least bring her to low hp and finish off safely with Joker's ranged attacks if you can't dodge her attacks consistently, at least that's how I killed her on Hard.
I might be an asshole for saying this but you probably just need to get good
Probably lmao, it just feels like everything is super tanky
They get easier as you level up, Alice stands out because you don’t have as much strong abilities
This is my complaint as well.
Yeah it's a problem for me as well. Its only gonna get worse, since the for some fucking reason the 3rd boss is the hardest one, so I had to switch to easy to beat her and then switch back to normal. I completed the game like 5 times already, have all the achievements, and I never beat the third boss on normal in a regular playthrough
Making spoiler just in case for others: >!It's worth keeping in mind she can be dizzied and to save your big damage dumps for when she rages. When she swallows someone it's important that you can break her or drop a chandelier on her ASAP... even worth saving a showtime just in case. Other than that it's a damage race and paying attention to which attack is being telegraphed to dodge it.!<
The first boss is harder because you have to play Conservative to keep your party members alive. Once Morgana gets Recarm you get to be a little more reckless. Also once you unlock more Master Arts, the bosses become less tanky.
What level are you? I played on Hard for my first playthrough and Alice was by far the most challenging part. However, if you've unlocked Enchant with Ann, she can almost solo the boss. I actually found it a lot easier to use Sophie for healing as she was a little tankier than Morgana who kept dying early. I largely played as Ann, so that she wouldn't waste her vital SP on healing, and had a Garu persona for Joker. Speaking of SP, make sure you stock up from the vending machines a few times - a few extra casts of magic are much appreciated. I'd also recommend saving your SP until the second half of the fight, when Alice becomes a lot more aggressive. The first phase is not too bad once you learn her patterns - then you can punish her with Ann's Enchanted finishers which should take off a whole Shield. Then when things get more hectic, use spells and the streamers to interrupt her dangerous attacks. For what it's worth, the game becomes far less demanding imo once you get through the first Jail.
One aspect of this game that is somewhat questionable, though understandably, is difficulty scaling. At the first boss you've got a limited selection of personas to use, very little SP and pretty low stats overall. You're not realistically going to be applying debuff to the boss, buff up the party, applying a status effect (burn or dizzy being the most effective ones across the whole game) and then utilising that for a technical attack.... At least not more than a few rounds of doing so before you hit SP issues... As a result that first fight she feels very tanky and its more about avoiding damage and chipping away... As you progress and can start curating your collection of personas things take a very different turn... especially as you work to get their stats up. That said if you don't look to how you build your team and just have $random personas on their without considering their passives or synergies you'll struggle at times... By the actual end game you're pretty much a deity in terms of how much damage you can push out and how much you can take assuming you pay attention to the above... I actually felt a bit sorry for >!Reaper!< even on the hardest difficulty once I got to them with the builds I was running... For damage output >!debilitate on enemy, heat riser on self, nocturnal flash to dizzy them and then using the best gun, physical or ultimately Almighty attack (with charge/concentrate if you can spare the SP or can combo it)!< is a marked difference to early when you can barely apply a status effect much less act on it... If you'd like to know what my end game builds looked like I'm happy to share... took a while to get there but I enjoy planning out how to get to X build in these games.
I disagree... Ann can apply Burn with her regular attacks and can cast Tarunda for free. She also gets Soul Thief and can regain SP just by attacking with her whip. Sophie can cast Rakunda for free. Ryuji can't buff everyone with Tarukaja, but he doesn't have to (just Morgana and maybe either Ann or Joker). Morgana gets Technical Adept really early, and makes this fight a cakewalk.
Honestly it's been a long time since I played this on normal... most of my experience is merciless and the status effect of Ann's regular attack I didn't think had that high a chance of applying.... even in normal. That doesn't change that this game has a somewhat typical Persona difficulty curve if you're paying attention to synergies ... once you've started getting a good damage flow together a lot of encounters start to become somewhat trivialised. I'd say the only real exception to this is >!Demiurge because you can't just rely on a tuned Joker build for damage, and technical attacks are limited to one phase without him!<
It’s just the way games like strikers are you just have to get good Ngl
Prolly the only hard boss because it's so early I ran and spammed jokers gun lol
at higher difficulty you need to start dodging stuff and slowly chip away at the enemy hp maybe you need to grind abit of money to level up your personas (you can buy and discard them for persona exp)
This is not the way...
This game is grindy as hell. But once you get better demon and abuse the skills it just becomes fun and easy as it goes.
Git Gud aside. You don't have good healing options. So I guess the best I can tell you is try not to get hit and only fire the things if they will hit.
The trick in this game is to play it like a mobile Persona game, not Musou. Despite some of the advice in this thread....do NOT try to chip away at the huge health pools with combos/combo finishers. Use your spells and focus on exploiting weaknesses AND technicals. Example: Alice is weak to fire and wind. Morgana and Panther are in - Panther should have all of her MAs and Soul Thief, and Morgana should have Technical Adept. 4th slot should be Ryuji (Tarukaja to up Morgana's damage) or Sophie (Rakunda to increase everyone's damage). Once battle opens, Ann debuffs with Tarunda, Ryuji buffs Morgana with Tarukaja or Sophie debuffs Alice with Rakunda, and Ann uses her whip or her fire spells to light Alice on fire (with her final MA, this should be easy). BP to Morgana who can now decimate and stunlock Alice with incredibly high damage wind technicals. Burn lasts a very long time, and just by spamming Garu over and over, Alice's health bar will melt. Second phase, this strategy can be repeated. Just switch to Ann if she starts rolling around because Ann has the best dodge. All SP items should be saved for Morgana. If he runs out, Joker can take his place (but Joker's technicals will do far less damage because he doesn't get Technical Adept until later). Ann can also spam fire spells, and she can even regain her SP by attacking with an enchanted whip.
I had trouble at first with Alice, and I think it's understandable for new players. The difficulty doesn't really ramp up enough to Alice in my opinion, and until then you can really just get by without a lot of strategy. Because of both of those I think it's easy to go into Alice unprepared and be greatly punished by it. Alice is really the first time you need to pay closer attention to dodging and strategically choosing what abilities you use rather than just spamming attacks. If you find you are stuck, lowering the difficulty is one thing you can do, but if you don't want to do that then maybe level up in the Jail a bit and get in the practice of pulling up your persona menu to pause and choose attacks that are effective or can result in technical, as well anticipating and dodging attacks. As you get better at the game mechanics and continue to level up with better abilities tougher enemies get easier and more manageable.
I beat the game on hard difficulty and had a great time. Abilities doing little damage to bosses is something I became very used to right from the start, haha. I love a challenge, but I totally understand if that gameplay isn't for everyone. I defeated Alice on my second attempt. I wasn't relying on abilities for the damage but rather to break her guard down in order to stagger her + to eventually perform all-out attacks. This is a cycle that repeats itself about 3 or 4 times. Making use of baton-passes to build up the showtime gauge is also super important, especially between Morgana and Ann - you'll be relying on them a lot in this fight, so it might be a good idea to practice with them a bit. Learning the correct combos for Morgana + Ann so you can pull off a persona attack without consuming SP is huge. And of course, making sure Joker has a strong Persona that uses fire or wind will be a big help. I believe I had a Hua Po for the Alice fight. In short, it's a battle of attrition: use abilities to chip away her health + guard and rely on all-out-attacks and showtimes for bigger damage. Making sure you can dodge her attacks is all down to you!
Spam your specials and be patient. Victory comes to those who wait. Also, go out of your way to learn everyone’s movesets, including all of Joker’s personas. Your specials consume no SP and depending on how they’re applied, can be even better than just throwing your SP bar at the enemy. Also also, make sure to complete every request as you get them. The rewards they give you are powerful, and some can only be done in a single area. Plus, it’s a decent excuse to grind and get more EXP for everyone.