Persona 3 Reload Made Me Do Math in a High-Stress Situation & I Hated It

This article contains spoilers for the secret boss in Persona 3 Reload.

The main story of Persona 3 Reload is pretty challenging in its own right, with monthly bosses that will really put your skills to the test. But they all pale in comparison to its secret boss, which is still regarded as one of the toughest secret bosses in the entire series today.

I am, of course, talking about Elizabeth. The quirky Velvet Room Attendant accompanies you all throughout your journey in Persona 3 Reload, and she plays a key role in helping you fuse stronger Personas to take on tougher adversaries. Along the way, her character gets fleshed out quite a bit too, as you get to take her out to explore Tatsumi Port Island and show her how humans live.

By the end of the game, while Elizabeth feels like she’s got a good grasp of what humanity is like, she asks for one last favor. She wants you to pit you against the “ultimate adversary” and see how you fare. And let me tell you, when she says “ultimate adversary,” she’s not kidding around.

I’d first beaten Elizabeth in Persona 3 Portable on the PS Vita more than a decade ago. Revisiting the fight now in Persona 3 Reload, and I’m honestly baffled and confused by how 20-year-old me was able to find the time to spend hours grinding and preparing for one of the strictest, most punishing boss fights in the Persona series.

With little to no recollection of how difficult the fight was, and being the foolish fool that I am, I went into the P3 Reload fight with zero preparation. It was instantly clear that I was dead on arrival. Within the first five turns, the protagonist fell to the ground and died.

Then I started to prep. The second time around, I had more of a fighting chance, but there’s one crucial component to the Elizabeth fight that you need to keep in mind at all times: you have to accurately keep track of how much damage you’re dealing, or risk getting insta-killed.

What makes the Elizabeth fight so fun is that once you’ve figured out her attack patterns and rotations, you realize that things actually aren’t all that bad as long as you’re able to anticipate them. The difficulty lies in mathing out how much HP she has left, and determining when you can use a specific attack to end the fight. Missing a single step, or making a wrong calculation at the wrong time can end your run immediately.

The result is an extremely stressful fight. You’re fending off all her attacks and trying to make a note of her patterns, and at the same time, you’re having to calculate how much HP she has left each turn, and you have to identify the right time to use a Theurgy skill to end the fight successfully. And of course, let’s not forget all the hours of prepwork you had to do to even get to this point: farming for the best armor and weapon, and maxing out all your Social Links for the right Persona takes a lot of time.

As someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy math — or stress, for that matter — Persona 3 Reload‘s secret boss fight was nothing short of a nightmare. At the same time, that feeling you get when you finally beat her is indescribable.

Persona 3 Reload makes you work for this fight. By the time you beat her, there’s nothing left to strive for because you’ve already conquered the toughest challenge in the game, and the simple act of preparing for the fight automatically over-levels you for the final boss as well.

Even so, getting to see Elizabeth’s arc finally come to a close is a fine reward in its own right. When you beat her and she gives you her approval and acknowledges how far you’ve come, there’s a true feeling of satisfaction you rarely get in video games. And despite my hatred for both math and stress, that, I think, makes the whole ordeal worth it.