Attack Types

Melee Attacks

Press X to perform a melee attack with your currently equipped melee weapon. These attacks are not that strong but they don’t consume HP or SP when used. It’s a good way to finish off dying enemies without wasting precious HP/SP. The damage you can deal will depend on your St stat and your weapon damage so make sure to upgrade your melee weapons as often as you can afford. You can get new melee weapons from chests and from the airsoft shop in Shibuya./

Unlike in the previous iterations in the series where melee attacks are divided to slash, thrust, and blunt categories, melee attacks in P5 is just considered as a physical/melee damage, regardless of what melee weapon your characters use.

Gun Attacks

Ranged weapon attacks doesn’t deal as much damage as Skills but they have higher damage potential than melee weapons. They can exploit enemies weak to gun/ranged attack damage. While in the battle menu, press Up to ready your ranged weapon and press X to shoot.

You can continue shooting at the same target until you run out of ammo or switch targets before shooting. Most guns allows you to target a single enemy but there are some guns that target all enemies but damage one of them at a time at random. Ranged weapon ammo is quite limited and can only be refilled once you return to reality. There are generally no other ways to refill your bullet count so don’t waste your bullets on ordinary enemies; save them for targets weak to gun damage to exploit their weaknesses.

Status Ailments

These are negative status effects that can afflicted to enemies and your party. If your characters weren’t healed, the effects of the status ailments will continue for a few turns or until healed. It’s advisable to immediately treat these status ailments since they can significantly alter the direction of the battle. The status ailments in the game are as follows.

• Burn: Receive damage after the character’s action
• Freeze: Unable to act
• Shock: Unable to act, may also cause Electric damage to nearby allies.
• Dizzy: Accuracy is greatly reduced.
• Forget: Unable to use skills
• Sleep: Unable to act but HP and SP will recover over time.
• Confuse: Character will act automatically and take actions that will be disadvantageous to the party
• Fear: High chance of ignoring commands and flee from battle.
• Despair: Unable to act, SP decreases over time. Can lead to death.
• Rage: Increases attack while lowering defense. Can only use melee attacks.
• Brainwash: Attack allies, buff or heal enemies
• Hunger: Lowers the power of all attacks.

Technical Attacks

These are strong, follow up attacks done to enemies afflicted by a status Ailment. Take note that the enemies can also take advantage of this feature so be careful. Take note of the following technical attack combos:

• Hit a burned target with Wind
• Hit a frozen or shocked enemy with physical
• Hit a frozen, burning, or shocked enemy with nuclear
• Hit enemies afflicted with mental ailments (Confuse, Fear, Despair, Rage, or Brainwash) with Psychokinesis.
• Hit a sleeping or dizzied any with any attack