Persona 3 Reload: Final Checkmate weakness

Final Checkmate is the last type of Greedy Shadow you’ll face in Persona 3 Reload, and you can spot it randomly when you enter a floor in Adamah. Luckily for players, it has a glaring weakness.

Greedy Shadows can be annoying in their own right. They spawn randomly and take all the loot from a floor. You need to chase it through a floor using random directions, or you can have Fuuka perform a Tartarus Search to guarantee you’ll track it down (best use of 50SP in history).

Tartarus adventurers can rest easy knowing the Final Checkmate isn’t impervious to most damage types like the Glorious Hand. Instead, you can exploit it easily if you bring Yukari, Ken, or Aigis. Here is Final Checkmate’s weakness in Persona 3 Reload.

What is Final Checkmate’s weakness in Persona 3 Reload?

Final Checkmate is weak to Pierce in Persona 3 Reload, so it’s easy to take it down. Despite Fuuka listing it has over 5,000HP, though, its defense doesn’t seem to be great: our Shiva landed a Primal Force that left it with just 800HP, and that’s not counting the All-Out Attack that followed.

How to beat Final Checkmate in Persona 3 Reload

Beating Final Checkmate requires you to exploit its weakness and kill it before it escapes, which took five turns for us in our last battle. Normally, this shouldn’t be much of a problem: Yukari, Ken, and Aigis can deal Pierce damage with their basic attacks, while Junpei also has access to Pierce damage using skills—and that’s without counting the protagonist.

If you take advantage of its weakness, your team should set up multiple All-Out Attacks before Final Checkmate can even react. One of them is likely to take down Final Checkmate, guaranteeing a Shuffle Time (at least in theory, though we’ve had a few cases where it didn’t trigger).

Even if your composition isn’t great at exploiting Final Checkmate’s weakness (for instance, Koromaru, Mitsuru, and Akihiko), you should still defeat it before it escapes provided everyone is at the right level and the protagonist has a Persona with Pierce damage. While these three won’t hit the weakness, they can still deal good damage on their own, and Theurgies are also on the table if you need them.

If by any chance you don’t kill Final Checkmate within five turns, it will escape, like other hand-shaped shadows. Final Checkmate took these actions in our last fight against it:

• “Final Checkmate clenched their fist tight”: preparation
• Final Checkmate uses Megidolaon
• “Final Checkmate is exhausted”: it loses a turn
• “Final Checkmate is trying to flee”: last chance to defeat it
• Final Checkmate escapes

If Final Checkmate gets away, you’ll miss out on the XP from the battle and the items it stole from the floor. It will drop a piece of loot as a consolation prize. Though it’s not much consolation considering all the riches you could have walked away with.