Secret bosses have always been a neat feature of games. Going back to Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, hidden characters have always had a mysterious quality that makes us gravitate toward them. In the Yakuza titles, the final boss isn’t the actual final boss of the game. It’s the Amon boss fight. Normally accessible after finishing every other substory, most of these fights are not easy. They’re the ultimate challenge in the game. We’re gonna rank all the Yakuza Amon bosses by difficulty and cover Yakuza 0 through Like a Dragon and also the two Judgment titles.
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Yakuza Kiwami 2 features boss fights with not one Amon but four of them. The Amon gang in Yakuza Kiwami 2 is probably the easiest in the series. If done in Premium Adventure mode, you can buy the Photon Blade RG, which makes short work of all four of the Amon gang.
Jo about to face Kiryu for the second time.
All of them, including the big boy, Jo, don’t do a massive amount of damage, so you can easily drip-feed health the entire fight. A large part of why further Amon fights are so hard is that they can kill you so fast that you don’t have time to go into your items to heal. That isn’t an issue here.
Lost Judgment
The first Judgment offered Shin Amon as the secret boss, but Shin isn’t the Amon you fight here in the sequel, as Juzo takes his place. Shin probably should have fought if he wanted Yagami defeated, as Juzo’s much easier than him. Juzo is very manageable for an Amon fight.
(Video by: DanBrown0531)
He has plenty of unique moves, but they don’t do a crazy amount of damage, making the fight easy with a large supply of health items. He will take a while to take down, but thankfully, Yagami’s heat move, where you can grab him while knocked down, will ensure you’re always doing damage. It won’t be a pretty fight, but you should be able to beat it with no problems.
Yakuza 3
This is the first Amon fight where things are going to get tough. First, this boss takes the longest to actually get since you need to do not only all the substories but all the hitman missions and IF7 fights. Jo Amon is incredibly quick with his movements, and since Yakuza 3’s controls aren’t as smooth as further entries, this is a major disadvantage.
Jo wielding two Photon Blades in his third battle with Kiryu.
A lot of the time, you simply can’t keep up with him, and the fight can feel like a slog with how much it can drag out. Thankfully, Jo doesn’t do an insane amount of damage, but still, you’re likely to finish this fight with little or no healing items left. It’s a struggle, but nowhere near the harder fights to come.
Yakuza Kiwami
Jo Amon’s first battle with Kiryu is middle of the road in terms of difficulty throughout the series. Amon has two full health bars, with the first phase imitating Kiryu and the second imitating Majima. He can do a ton of damage, but the only times he can insta-kill you is his spin attack during the Majima phase. Other than that, you’re okay, especially if you take advantage of items.
Jo swirling around with a knife like Majima and doing big damage.
You can very easily cheese this fight by continually refilling your heat gauge with items and keep doing heat moves with the demonfire dagger. That’s by far the easiest way to finish this boss. It’s debatable that the Jingu boss fight at the end of the game is harder due to his extra goons and deadly firearms.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s Amon fight is actually at the end of the Millennium Tower dungeon, and the real Amon boss, found in the True Millennium Tower variant, is a tough but fair challenge. In this new JRPG Amon boss, Shin doesn’t fight alone. After a while, he’ll bring Kiryu, Saejima, and Majima into the fight. This makes it significantly harder.
(Video by: MadDogMajima7)
Using the Orbital Laser move (unlocked after completing the company side game) will majorly help in doing big damage to all four. However, Shin can also do the Orbital Laser move, and that will decimate your party. Make sure Saeko is consistently healing everybody, and make use of the hard-hitting poundmates to get through this. If you lose, you can thankfully retry the boss instead of going through the whole tower again.
Yakuza 5
The four-man Amon battle in Yakuza 5 is brutal, especially for Jo. The first three fights are pretty standard and nothing too outlandish, but Jo turns up the heat. First, it can be difficult to even hit the guy, let alone dodge his attacks, but his red heat form is another story. He rushes in fast and leaves behind fire trails, which do a ton of damage. If you’re caught in that, you’re probably dead.
Kiryu caught in Jo’s flames.
There are two things you can do. First, you can simply dodge and avoid him until he returns to his blue state. The other option is to also go into heat mode, which gives you more resistance, and you can stand and bang with Amon. Punching him here will do a little bit of damage, but that will add up over the course of the whole fight. Either way, this boss is going to be really hard.
Yakuza 0
Both Amon fights in Yakuza 0 are nasty in terms of difficulty. Kiryu fights So Amon, the father of Jo. The first phase is tough because his cannon can shoot out a death ray and instantly kill you. You definitely need to watch your movement. In the second phase, a helicopter will drop down chairs and tables. They’ll fly all around the arena, and touching them will deal damage. You can get consistently pecked by these, so take advantage of the big arena to get around.
So Amon challenging Kiryu to a fight.
Majima fights Jo Amon, who switches between Kiryu’s and Majima’s fighting styles. It’s a pretty hard fight, but only the Mad Dog style from Majima will kill you incredibly quickly. Other than that, you can drip-feed health the whole fight without much worry about getting insta-killed. You still need to watch out, though, when Jo does go into the Mad Dog style.
Yakuza 6
Yakuza 6 features the final battle between Kiryu and Jo Amon, and you don’t even need to beat all the substories this time around to access it. The final fight with Jo Amon is incredibly difficult on anything above easy mode. Amon himself isn’t too bad, that is until his drones come to help.
(Video by: devilleon7)
When Jo gets below half-health, drones will come in and mass kamikaze on you for an instant kill. You’re lucky if you survive a blast because, most of the time, it will end you. It’s so frustrating because you have to do the whole fight over again, and it only gets hard more than halfway through. You can set the difficulty to easy to make Jo a non-threat, but any other mode will have you dying a lot.
Yakuza 4
Yakuza 4’s Amon gauntlet isn’t hard in the way previous fights were. The reason it’s so high is because of Jiro Amon, which is almost impossible to take down. After dealing enough damage, Jiro will enter heat mode, which will allow his health to recover incredibly quickly. In order to beat this fight on anything other than easy, you must rush him and do as much damage as possible with heat moves and other attacks.
(Video by: MazManZero)
If you’re not good at doing that, this fight is literally impossible because Jiro will easily regain his lost health continuously. On easy, weapons like the shotgun do a lot more damage than normal mode, so it shouldn’t be too bad there. The three other Amon fights aren’t nearly as bad, and even the big boy, Jo, isn’t too brutal this time. Still, Jiro alone makes this the second hardest Amon boss in the Yakuza series.
Hardest Amon Boss in the Yakuza Series: Judgment
By far, the hardest Amon in the series is Shin’s fight from Judgment. The reason why is that during the first phase of the fight, he can easily grab you and steal your phone. This means that you can’t go into the inventory and heal, which has been the primary factor in why previous Amon fights were doable. You can use your three items in the quick selection inventory, however. By the way, you don’t get your phone back, either. Taking away your phone by itself makes it the hardest Amon in the series, but there’s more.
Shin stealing Yagami’s phone in Judgment.
The second phase of the fight has Shin switching between red and blue fighting styles, and you must match this color scheme by switching your own style. If Amon attacks you while you’re in a different color fighting style, you’ll die quicker than a second. However, it gets even worse. The third phase grants him a little bubble shield that you can only pop with an attack with the opposite color.
This fight is hard on so many levels. Not only do you have to try as hard as possible not to lose your phone in the first phase, and you have quickly switch your style to not get insta-killed, but then you have to risk it all anyway, just to pop the shield. No doubt in my mind Shin Amon from Judgment is the hardest Amon fight in the series. Even on the easiest difficulty, he’ll take hours to beat.
Amon likely isn’t finished yet. With the announcement of several more games in the Yakuza series to come, he’ll surely lie in wait for your return. These Amon bosses are always a nice challenge, and because you often need to beat all the substories to fight him, you get really excited about what Amon has in store this time. For an experienced Yakuza player, whenever you boot up a new Yakuza title for the first time, you often can’t wait to see the Amon boss.
