Shadow Okumura – Persona 5 Royal
The Shadow Okumura fight in Persona 5 Royal is such a bummer because it’s a known choke-point in a game on the main path of a nearly 100-hour game that shows up within the last 20 hours. I’ve known people who get to this fight and consider quitting the game entirely after all that time dumped into it.
You’ve got a 30-minute time limit and several cutscenes play out mid-fight without stopping the clock. The entire sequence is built to stall you out, with Shadow Okumura summoning waves of enemies that you must wipe out ad nauseam until—finally!— you can strike him down with no resistance. It’s a tedious fight by design, that feels less about crafting a strategy and more about beating your head against a wall until you can punch the corpo astronaut in the mouth. This isn’t helped by it occurring during what’s widely considered the low point in the game’s lengthy run time. It’s just an ill-advised sequence at a time when Persona 5 Royal needed more forward momentum at this point to reignite its spark. Luckily, everything that follows is all bangers. — Kenneth Shepard
