Best Teams for Shadow Kiuchi Recollection in Persona 5 The Phantom X

The first Palace Ruler players face in Persona 5 The Phantom X is Kiuchi, a disgraced former baseball player whose actions as the “Subway Slammer” resulted in the critical injury of Tomoko. If Wonder’s mysterious visions are to be believed, his actions would eventually lead to the death of a baby if left unchecked.

After defeating Kiuchi and collapsing his Palace in Persona 5 The Phantom X, he can be refought from the Realm of Repression menu at a variety of difficulties, scaling all the way to the game’s level cap. On these higher difficulties, Kiuchi’s attacks remain the same, but his higher stats mean a solid team and a good strategy is much more important, especially when taking them on at the levels they’re unlocked at.

Shadow Kiuchi Boss Guide

Phase 1: Shadow Kiuchi

Kiuchi will begin the boss fight in human form, where he has no weaknesses, resistance to gun, and immunity to wind. He is also immune to down point damage, control and spiritual ailments, and insta-kill effects. He can attack using Hypersonic Slider or Triple Hit Streak, both of which deal physical damage to a single target. When he gets down to half health, he will begin taking two actions a turn, using each attack once.

Generally, this phase is pretty straightforward, as long as you keep your party buffed and healed, and deal a decent amount of damage.

Phase 2: Takeyuki “Cupid” Kiuchi

After entering this phase, Kiuchi will choose a target at the end of each of his turns. Make sure that the target is guarding, top up their health, and apply a shield if possible, since Kiuchi will hit them with Lustful Drive Ball on his next turn for a ton of damage. He gets two actions whenever it becomes his turn, using one to execute Lustful Drive Ball, and the other to perform one of three different attacks:

Keep defending his targets while chipping away with everyone else, and eventually you’ll drain his first health bar. After losing his first Health Bar, Kiuchi will call in two minions called Devoted Girl and Delusional Girl, and immediately use an attack called Fanatic’s Fastball to damage the entire party. If you don’t take out his minions, he’ll repeat this attack with much more power on his next turn, so it’s important to prioritize them. Devoted Girl is weak to fire and nuclear, while Delusional girl is weak to lightning and nuclear.

While Kiuchi has minions, he will also receive healing periodically, making them even more important to take out. Defeating both minions will weaken Kiuchi, leaving him unable to take any actions for 1 turn and increasing all damage he takes by 20%. Once he’s weakened, unload on him with your strongest attacks while you have the chance. When Kiuchi stands back up, he’ll use an attack from the list shown earlier and resummon his minions, restarting the cycle. Occasionally, he will wait a turn before resummoning his minions, attacking twice in a row instead.

Once Kiuchi’s second health bar is depleted, he will stop summoning minions and revert to a simple strategy of attacking twice per turn. At this point, he’s on his last legs, so keep your health and shields topped up and blast him down.

Best Teams for Shadow Kiuchi in Persona 5 The Phantom X

Shadow Kiuchi has very few resistances and immunities, with phase 1 being resistant to Gun and immune to Wind, while phase 2 resists Gun and Bless and drains Wind. Naturally, this means that bringing along party members and Personas that specialize in Wind damage is a bad idea. Since Kiuchi’s minions are individually weak to Fire and Lightning, and share a weakness to Nuclear, it’s important to bring party members and/or Personas that can utilize those elements, so you can reliably stun Kiuchi.

Team 1

An easy and effective team for dealing with Kiuchi is Wonder, Closer, Cattle, Moko, and Puppet. Ensure that Wonder has access to Personas with Fire and Lightning, or with Nuclear attacks, and have Moko buff Wonder and Closer as often as possible. Cattle will mainly be healing the party, and inflicting burn on Kiuchi whenever possible, though when the minions arrive he should go on the offensive to take out the one that is weak to fire.

Closer’s multi-hit attacks, buffed by Moko, will tear through Kiuchi’s health bar surprisingly fast, and are also excellent for sweeping up the minions. Wonder should focus on piling extra damage wherever it’s needed during the minion phase, and taking advantage of Nuclear attacks to land technical hits on Kiuchi after Cattle has inflicted burn and/or Closer has inflicted shock. If Wonder has a Persona with Lightning, he can benefit from Closer’s party-wide Lightning Damage buffs, too. Put it in Wonder’s first Persona slot to get a damage buff for the whole team.

Puppet, as our Elucidator, can be used to regularly apply shields to the party as a whole with her first skill, or apply a strong single-target shield to help out with Kiuchi’s Lustful Drive Ball attacks. Her third skill can apply a powerful damage buff if the party has enough seashell stacks, making it perfect for after Kiuchi gets weakened later on in the fight.

If you have access to Riddle, she’s another great strategist option for this setup, offering some really strong team-wide buffs and strengthening Puppet’s shields. You could also bring Panther instead of Closer and rely entirely on Wonder to deal lightning or Nuclear damage during the minion phases, taking advantage of her tremendously high fire damage and the team boost from having two Fire Party Members (Panther and Cattle) to tear the enemy down.

Team 2

Another very effective team, which is fairly easy to put together, consists of Wonder, Panther, Key, Cattle, and Okyann. This team is all about firepower, both figuratively and very literally. Cattle is once again on healing duty, with Panther and Key working together to amp up the party’s fire damage while dishing it out. Key should try to keep burn and sacred flame up on Kiuchi as much as possible, both for the excellent damage every turn, and also so Panther can take advantage of the burning for technical hits.

Wonder should be equipped with a Fire Persona too, so he can get in on the action, but also bring along Lightning or Nuclear damage to exploit the weaknesses of Kiushi’s minions when they get summoned. A little extra healing, or a Persona that can raise defense or apply shields, can also work wonders. Okyann is here to further enable the crazy damage of Panther and Key, especially once status effects are applied.

Players who want to run this setup but with better defenses should consider swapping Okyann with Puppet, giving the party access to shields to improve damage mitigation and take some of the healing pressure off of Cattle and Wonder.