Persona 5 Tactica – How to defeat Marie (Mission 22)

It’s clear from the campaign's start that Marie will be a serious pain in Persona 5 Tactica. So when you finally get to go toe-to-toe with the first big boss of the game, how can you defeat Marie?

Marie has been enslaving the locals, forcing them to help her prepare for her big wedding. She’s clearly got a screw or two loose, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t powerful. Read on to find out how to take her down.  

How to beat Marie in Persona 5 Tactica

You’ll get to take on Marie during Mission 22 of the main campaign. Unlike other missions, this is not repeatable, so it's really more like a quest. This is demonstrated in the mission’s makeup, which has several unique mechanisms. However, while completing the quest moves you to a different location don’t worry, you can still redo all other earlier quests and complete any quests you may not yet have completed. 

Setup

There are no set heroes for this mission, so you can pick any team that suits you. Your best options will be characters with good movement and good gun range, while high HP certainly won’t hurt. 

I also advise packing skills that do high damage. This is because Marie ignores status effects, so stuns and pushbacks will have no effect on her. You simply need to lay down raw damage, while having plenty of options to move around the battlefield. You should also add a healer to your team in order to keep everyone alive; I picked Joker (with a healing Persona), Fox (fast with great gun range), and Erina (the healing ability attached to her Voltage skill, Flag of Freedom). 

Battle mechanics

If you avoid bouquets and the Tank (see below), you should be able to beat Marie without too much trouble. Try to stay separated as much as possible, as this will give you the best chance to find cover once the Tank is deployed. If you use Erina, it’ll be even easier to stay upright. This is a long battle, so she’ll get to use the voltage skill several times to heal you up. 

Bouquets

Bouquets can either help or harm you, so be careful with them. They will always blow up after one turn, but only at the end of the turn after Marie has her Just Married Tank (see below). If you are in one of the eight squares around a bouquet at the end of a turn, you’ll take heavy damage. 

You can move a Bouquet by hitting them with a melee attack. In the first section of the game, you can hit them directly onto Marie to deal her damage. Later, you’ll want to knock them into the path of the Tank. At the end of the fight, you’ll want to maneuver one directly into the center of the trap.

The Just Married Tank

The movement of the Tank is always telegraphed by the spaces on the ground marked yellow with an exclamation mark. Don’t get these confused with the markings that indicate bouquet damage areas, as they appear similar and can overlap.

Note that sometimes, if Marie is focused on a character, you can control the path of the Tank by moving that character. You have two options here: if there are no bouquets, it is usually possible to avoid the Tank hitting you by moving near a wall (see above). 

Part one - Reduce Marie to zero health

There are no hard and fast rules here, but keep doing as much damage as you can. Bouquets do big damage, but beyond that, simply play to each character’s strengths. There are no adds to worry about and you’ll have little use for skills in the second part of the battle, aside from healing. As such, don’t hold on to your SP, use it to do as much damage as possible instead.

Related: Personas Tips and Tricks Guide for Persona 5 Tactica

Cover won’t help you either, so concentrate more on good positioning to make your attacks land while staying separated. This makes avoiding the Tank easier, as well as giving you a better chance of activating multiple Bouquets. Her 2k+ health seems like a lot at first, but I had that gone in less than 20 turns.  

Part two - Indestructible Marie

Once you see Marie do a massive heal and gain all her Health back, you will no longer be able to damage her with normal attacks. Save any SP you might have left for healing. From now on, you want to stay alive until a blue square appears in the center of the room (see above). Just one more fancy move is required, and you’ll have won the battle.

Tanking that Tank

Once it appears, you’ll want to keep your team members as close to the blue square as possible. What you need to do is maneuver a Bouquet into the central part of the blue square. This may take a bit of luck (due to positioning) and at least two of your characters to move the same Bouquet. Luckily, the Bouquets can take a lot of damage, so even two melee attacks won’t set one off. 

Note that the Bouquet needs to be in a position where the whole Tank will enter the square. If only part of the Tank is in the square, it will not trigger the result you need. This should be relatively simply done once you can get a double melee attack on a bouquet (see above, where the Tank will be coming in from the right, almost filling the square, below).

Once the Tank is in the square, you can watch a final cutscene and enjoy the end of Marie’s reign of terror.

For more on Persona 5 Tactica here at Pro Game Guides, check out All Persona 5 Tactica characters, ranked and Stealing Classified Info Walkthrough – Persona 5 Tactica.