How hard is merciless?

[Dominic]

Just finished the game on hard and done all the side quest (post game included on hard) and was wondering how hard is merciless. Thinking of doing a ng+ just to wrap up the achievements.

[Jargous]

You can die in the tutorial. Hopefully that's enough info for you.

[the8anarchist88]

^this, i had to make Yoshitsune with max stats via the fusion loop to not die the moment a pixie lit me up with Zio followed by multiple Agi's from jack'o lanterns. Merciless eases up slightly after that, but it expects you to know how to utilize resistances and weaknesses at that point, you can't brute force the game.

[Loonar]

Merciless is pretty easy in all honesty

[Blitz]

i got cocky thinking it would be ez pz
uh... no

take your time to prepare a good set of personas, weapons, protectors, accessories and items

[Jargous]

There's a reason why you have to beat the Reaper before you start Merciless, because that is your best chance to get the best items possible before your items are made to look average just about the entire way as your life will be mostly grinding incenses if you can't handle it.

[Loonar]

Honestly, if you've killed the reaper, you more than likely have all the items you need. I would recommend killing the Dire Shadows for their drops if you haven't. As long as you have items and decent Personas, you can fly through Merciless.

[Darth_Roxs]

I got one shot by a Pixie. It's totally doable if you're smart. I ended up using a Persona that was immune to lightning and had great fire defense. I'm only missing two achievements now :-)

[fayz]

I finished a NG+ on merciless, and I guess you should try to go into it with max stat personas using the fusion loop, guides on it can be found online. Enemies in merciless drops incenses of all kinds, so I did not have to worry about those, can just grind. The only harder parts for me was protecting Futaba from even a single scratch and when I have to use the other PTs as their persona stats were not maxed out for me. Aside from that, it should be fine I guess. Had a blast playing it on merciless

[Docklee]

Originally posted by FayZ:

I finished a NG+ on merciless, and I guess you should try to go into it with max stat personas using the fusion loop, guides on it can be found online. Enemies in merciless drops incenses of all kinds, so I did not have to worry about those, can just grind. The only harder parts for me was protecting Futaba from even a single scratch and when I have to use the other PTs as their persona stats were not maxed out for me. Aside from that, it should be fine I guess. Had a blast playing it on merciless

I'm actually surprised how well they balanced the difficulty. I went in with just regular endgame persona so Yoshi, Metatron etc. with base stats, and the difficulty is very solid. The real "difficulty" comes from dumb AI and no party switching during fights paired with inability to restart fights which punishes you if you don't remember boss weaknesses and/or skills.

[AmberAmber]

just cleared reaper on merciless as well. all in all i think merciless is the true way to play the game as the difficulty actually makes u play the game at a level above button mashing.

[Pootis17]

Merciless forced me do avoid Physical shadows and attack them with guns or Personas until they are knocked out for temporary

[Ciphersize]

is basically evade everything
after a while it will be easy
i recomend you to use lucifer and add psy, nuke and bless resistances

[Dominic]

I'm currently at the second dungeon and it's not too bad after I went ahead and do some set up :)

Thanks everyone. Merciless felt really hard at first but I'm easing it