SMT IV: Apocalypse - Cleopatra (Apocalypse Difficulty, No Skill Inheritance)

"I can assure you Dagda, wearing women's clothing is essential to reaching my full potential as a Godslayer"

Unlike Mephisto, Cleopatra is a very tricky boss, even by endgame standards. She brings several unique gimmicks to the battle, which collectively make it very difficult (if possible at all) to win without breaking the fusion level limit. With her elemental coverage, buff and debuff skills, and changing weaknesses, it's much harder to put together a team that can hold its own defensively while still managing an acceptable damage output. I chose to use Krishna and Inanna for this fight; Krishna is a decent demon for this battle and Inanna is very good, but this is still one of the most interesting battles in the game even when using those two.

Egyptian Horde: Before fighting Cleopatra, there's a somewhat easy horde battle to deal with first. It has no buff or debuff skills and follows a very predictable attack pattern, so it should pose little to no threat against a moderately prepared team. On turn one, it uses Royal Curse, a weak multi-target attack that inflicts brand. On turn two it uses Judgement Light or Mudoon with some really weird properties, but that's otherwise insignificant. On turn three it uses Ancient Curse and follows up the next turn with Grave Judgement, which is essentially a reskin of Krishna's Moxagita, which deals almighty damage based on the number of inflicted statuses and misses any healthy targets. On the next turn, the sequence repeats. None of those skills pose much of a threat after some buffs and debuffs as long as Nanashi is wearing the Sharp Earring, which he should be using for Cleopatra anyway. That allows him to heal the team with an Amrita Shower and avoid Grave Judgement, and there's nothing else to really worry about. This battle would have been quicker if Nanashi had Mabufudyne, but Cleopatra is difficult enough to deal with that it's not wise to waste a skill slot for this battle.

Cleopatra: There are very few bosses in the game with as diverse a skillset as Cleopatra. For her main damaging moves, she uses her signature Dazzle Ray (which, thankfully, does not pierce) along with Deadly Wind and Ice Age. For multi-target skills, she has both Mabufudyne and Mazandyne, and will sometimes use Megidolaon as well. Late in the battle, she can combine these with Will of Frost and Will of Wind, making it even more risky to field weaknesses to ice and force. She also has a healthy array of support skills, with Luster Candy and Dekaja to keep her attacks reasonably powerful and her signature Alluring Banter to inflict charm and minimize defense of a target. Finally, she uses Adaptive Tactics to periodically change her weakness, and Amrita to cure herself of poison if she is afflicted.

With my setup, the key to beating Cleopatra is to prevent her from using Ice Age and Deadly Wind as much as possible. Both of those moves do very heavy damage even with buffs and debuffs, and they're even more problematic since Ukano Mitama is weak to Ice and Deadly Wind ruins the battle with lost status too often. Dazzle Ray is even stronger than those two, but it can simply be blocked by Tetraja. Even better, Cleopatra's AI can't detect Tetraja and will use Dazzle Ray more often if there is a target weak to light, which is one reason why the Wonderland Goth armor is great for this battle. Since she attacks Nanashi with Dazzle Ray so often, she has much less opportunities to use Ice Age and Deadly Wind, keeping Ukano Mitama and Krishna alive. By exploiting her weaknesses it's possible to eat up even more of her press turns with Adaptive Tactics and Amrita, making her even less dangerous.

Although it does have its shortcomings, I really like this team setup because of how well it can deal with Cleopatra's characteristics and gimmicks. Krishna and Inanna can combine to keep buffs at +1/-3, as good as it gets for this battle. Ukano Mitama can heal and throw up Tetraja as well as replenish MP. Inanna has very strong elemental attacks to aid Nanashi when Cleopatra becomes weak to those attacks, which significantly reduces the battle length. Finally, Krishna can use Venomous Raga to poison Cleopatra; the damage is respectable, but this is also notable because it prevents her from smirking and sometimes causes her to use Amrita. I was also able to win in other attempts by substituting Ukano Mitama and Krishna for Titania and Zhu Yin; those two resist both ice and force, making it easier defensively, but unfortunately it made the battle much longer since Nanashi had to handle Tetraja and item duty. Replacing Inanna and only using demons below Nanashi's level is even more difficult; in theory, I could have substituted her for Orcus, which also resists both ice and force and carries War Cry to make up for Debilitate, but the battle would take much longer without Inanna's damage output so I didn't really want to try it.