Persona 4's Contrarian King- An Oddball Among Optional Bosses

Persona 4 has many optional bosses, from the relatively weak foes faced by going back to dungeons after they're completed, to the extremely powerful superbosses The Reaper and Margaret(this game's Velvet Room attendant). The Contrarian King, the boss faced after the first major dungeon, is perhaps the strangest one of them in a few ways, particularly in how difficult he is for the time he's encountered.

For context, the Contrarian King can be fought after completing Yukiko's Castle. Once Yukiko recovers and joins the Investigation Team on April 30, you can re-enter Yukiko's Castle, and are told that a powerful Shadow has taken up residence on the eighth floor, where you fought Shadow Yukiko. You will thus have to walk all the way up there, which shouldn't be too hard for a party that not only defeated Shadow Yukiko but has Yukiko herself to fill out the party.

The Contrarian King himself is another story, however. He shares a model with the King family of enemies, relatively weak foes who summon allies and retreat if not defeated quickly, but has little in common with them. Not only does he not summon any minions, but he has many abilities that make him a formidable foe in his own right. With 1,600 HP, roughly one and a half times that of Shadow Yukiko, he won't be going down very quickly.

The Contrarian King's first notable ability is Red Wall, which grants him resistance to Fire attacks, so a natural assumption would be that he's covering up his weakness to fire, right? Wrong. He actually drains Fire skills, meaning that any Fire skill will actually heal him. Since Fire skills are the magic-oriented Yukiko's only means of doing damage, Yukiko is left on healing duty.

The Contrarian King can use Marakunda to decrease the defense of the entire party. This can be problematic, since you don't have Marakukaja yet, but it's ultimately not that much of a concern, and you'll soon see why.

Now for the Contrarian King's physical attacks. He often uses Hysterical Slap, which does a light amount of damage and can inflict rage. Kill Rush, which does light damage one to three times, is more of a threat, since it can potentially KO party members who are low on health, but it pales in comparison to Rampage. Rampage hits the entire party one to three times each for supposedly "light" damage, but does around 300 damage per hit, at a time in which your party members will maybe have 250 HP, and in a game in which the HP cap is 999.

There's honestly no explanation as to why the Contrarian King's Rampage is so deadly. The Contrarian King has a Strength stat of 24, out of a maximum of 99, but while this is significantly more than Shadow Yukiko, it shouldn't make his Rampage this deadly, especially when none of his other physical attacks hit this hard.

One might imagine the other optional bosses are this hard, but this is not the case. While they are higher level than the Contrarian King, they're for a few reasons. First, none of their attacks are as deadly as the Contrarian King's unique Rampage. Second, most of them have exploitable weaknesses. Last, the gap between their level of power and the bosses of their respective dungeons is not as large as the discrepancy between Shadow Yukiko and the Contrarian King.

The Contrarian King is worth defeating, though If you are victorious, you get a large boost to your Courage stat, as well as the Suzaku Feather, a weapon for Yukiko that not only has a high attack for this point in the game, but also increases her maximum SP by 50. Since Yukiko is a magic-oriented character, that allows her more SP to heal or use fire skills, and is rather useful.

In conclusion, the Contrarian King is a bit of a strange boss. It throws some curveballs at the player, such as faking them out with Red Wall, but would probably be more manageable if Rampage weren't so overpowered.